


Worth Life

by loquaciousquark



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Drama, F/M, Presumed Dead, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-28
Updated: 2014-10-23
Packaged: 2018-02-15 03:00:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 58,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2213262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loquaciousquark/pseuds/loquaciousquark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke and Fenris are forced to part ways during the chaos of Kirkwall's final battle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Every time I think I've managed to get Dragon Age longfic out of my head, some new idea grabs me by the back of the neck and shakes me until words fall out. You think I'd be past that by now.
> 
> This fic was inspired by a kmeme prompt, as usual. I won't spoil the whole thing, but in part it asked for Fenris to be separated from Hawke after the final battle and to explore the cost of that. Also as usual, I'd like to reassure anyone hesitant to jump into a multi-chapter fic that this story is already completed. I plan to post each chapter as I finish the polishing, which from past experience is not usually much more than two or three days.
> 
> Finally, I'd like to give immense and unending thanks to my incredible beta and friend Jade Sabre. Never have I ever been so grateful to know you as when you've suffered through another sixty thousand words of Hawke/Fenris without even liking Fenris all that much, just because I asked you to. You are truly the paragon of patience; honey, there ain't a statue in Orzammar that can hold a candle to you.
> 
> —
> 
> Recommended soundtrack for this chapter: [Song for Bob](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=andd1eYucx0) from the Assassination of Jesse James OST.

Part One

_—_

. . . and remember to the last, that while there is life there is hope.  
 _—_ _Wreck of the Golden Mary_ , Charles Dickens

_—_

The world ends.

After that comes chaos. The templars permit them to leave without challenge—but outside the Gallows there is fire and rubble and angry citizens huddled in tight packs at every corner, staring at the Chantry's blackened smoke where it belches starward, spitting words just past the edge of hearing towards Hawke as she leads them through the streets. The city's Chantry and Circle both lost in the span of hours; two of Hawke's companions lost in the same; and now the city burns with hate and fear and Fenris seethes to see it.

But now is not the time; he is bleeding and Hawke is bleeding, and despite the name of Champion there will be templars crawling through the streets in a matter of days. Isabela's ship waits at the docks to carry them to safety—or away from Kirkwall, at any rate, and he does not pretend the two are alike. (Neither does he pretend that Hawke will not return here eventually, nor that he will not return here with her. Her home is here, regardless; his home is with her.) Still—it is _flight_ , when he thought he had done with it, his heart pounding, his grip tightening on his sword at every distant scream and crack of wood beneath flame, beneath the rage of a city shredded apart by too many months of terror.

By the harbor he is gasping, his hand clenched hard to his side where the leather is split. Their little boat from the Gallows had docked at the northernmost tip, avoiding the small fleet already deploying across the bay to the place where the Gallows burns. The circuitous escape had seemed sound enough in theory, but even the lyrium's lingering strength cannot keep the agony from every step. As they make their way southward to the private mooring that keeps Isabela's ship she collects her crew, one by one, names and faces Fenris has never heard, all leaping at Isabela's curt commands to meet them at the _Call_. Merrill breaks off to the alienage, Aveline and Donnic to the Keep, brief embraces and hurried promises little comfort in this sudden splintering of their company.

No _time—_

Most of the mobs spare them, armed as they are; only once are they challenged by a group of wild-eyed elves looting a warehouse just inside the gates, not two real weapons between them despite their frenzy. It costs only moments to cow them, but his vision blurs by the end and he staggers in the darkness, reaching awkwardly to the nearest wall for purchase, the cobblestones pitching dangerously beneath his feet. The tip of his sword shrieks across the stone where he drags it behind him.

Someone grabs his arm—Hawke, he realizes, shaking his head desperately to clear it—slings it over her shoulder, her face a muddled mess of smeared blood and a deep bruise blossoming under one eye. Fenris shakes his head again, stumbles over something broken and slick as they move forward; she says his name, her voice far away and frantic, and then Isabela is there too, hand over his where it clamps against his stomach, and Varric is—somewhere, saying something about the ship—

"Come _on_ ," Hawke says, her fingers blazing hot on the back of his skull, igniting a throbbing agony that makes him gasp. He had not known—had not even felt the blow, not with Meredith burnt alive and the Gallows alight with magefire and twisted power.

He stumbles again. _How far_ , he means to say, only it comes out slurred and wordless, and he thinks it should alarm him only he is so _tired_ —Hawke pinches the back of his neck, hard and piercing through her gauntlets, and for a moment the world solidifies again, sharpening into the bright, red-burnt horizons above the barb-tipped walls, the acrid scent of smoke hanging lower with every step. Glass shatters somewhere in the distance and a woman screams—and then he smells salt over the smoke and looks up to the stark-black spars of Isabela's ship spearing outwards against the starry sky.

Wood slats under his feet: the gangplank, rickety and narrow. "Here," says Hawke, "take him, take him, careful—" and then the world lurches and Carver braces him instead, too tall and too broad, stretching the wound across his stomach tight enough to bleed again.

No—this is not right— "Hawke?"

She dips her head into his view, her face swimming oddly, her eyes bright. One white-gleaming hand presses firm against his waist, then against the back of his head. "I have to go back."

"No. No."

"Orana's in the house alone. She'll have had no warning—I have to find her, get her out before they come looking for me."

" _No_ ," he says, voice too tight, unable to think through the dim fog, only certain that this is _wrong_. "Or—let me—let me go with you."

"You can't _walk_." She ducks forward, kisses him hard on the mouth. "I'll take the dog and be back before you know it."

 _At your side_! The words tangle in his throat, choking him, soundless in desperation. _Gladly, at your side_! But she has already turned away, her eyes on her brother, on Isabela already up the gangplank.

"You've got to clean those wounds, get them bandaged," she tells him, and Carver nods, a rough thing that jars Fenris's shoulder; Hawke looks up. "And Isabela—"

"We'll wait as long as we can."

"But no longer."

There's a stretched moment of silence, heavy over the distant roar of flame; then Isabela says, "No longer, Hawke. You know where to go, if..."

"Don't _worry_!" Hawke says, laughing, stepping back to solid stone, her staff straight in her hand, her dark hair lined fire-gold around her brighter eyes. Her mabari stands proudly beside her. "I'm coming back!"

And then—and then, his voice dead in his throat, all his words unsaid between them—

She is gone.

—

He refuses to go below. He knows it irritates Carver, who wishes to dress his wounds and be done with it; he knows it worries Varric, whose dwarven eyes see too sharply the way his breaths come thin and shallow, the way the thinner blood still seeps into the rough cloth he has pressed to his stomach. Five minutes—ten minutes—twenty—he leans hard on the rail, ignoring the men and women who scurry and shout behind him, painfully aware of how the horizon over Hightown grows redder and redder with flame.

The ship sways beneath him, or _he_ sways, he is not sure, and suddenly Carver curses viciously enough at his back to make him flinch. "Damn them all," he says, and flings his hand towards the far end of the docks. "They're firing the boats!"

And they are, some mad-eyed dockworkers with torches moving ship to ship to ship, a wake of fire scorching the salt from the air. Carver curses again and something in Fenris's stomach goes very cold, and before he can find a word the anchor is already up, dripping brackish seawater that splashes too loud in his ears. _No_. No. Not yet. Not yet—

"Set her free," Isabela shouts, carrying over the chorus of her men's _aye_ s. "But keep close as we can—I want eyes on the docks at all times!"

They do not go far; Fenris blinks as they pull away, blinks again in fruitless effort to clear his vision as they pull with oar and sail to the open black water of the bay. In the distance the Gallows still smolders, a match to the place where the sky burns above the Chantry; for an instant Fenris thinks of Anders, there at the last battle and then gone at last in some unknown banishment, and it surprises him how little anger surges at the thought.

Or perhaps it is only smothered by worry. Another quarter-hour passes without Hawke, without signal from the docks; in the distance angry torches dot the pier, unwilling to set out to reach them and unwilling to allow them to return. He does not know how—when Hawke comes—

His knees buckle without warning. Carver tries to catch him and misses; he falls to one knee on the deck and cannot rise again, his limbs like a colt's, too long and graceless and beyond his control. He grips the railing as Carver takes hold of his arms and helps him to his feet—and then a sailor shouts, high and alarmed, "Captain! They're raising the chains!"

Fenris does not understand at first, the world a smear of color and flame as the sailors rush to the port rail. And then—and then he sees them, the massive iron links rising slow and inexorable from the sea at the far side of the bay, each as long as a man, their long heavy line slung between the colossal bronze statues that guard the mouth of the harbor. An ancient defense meant to keep the enemy fleets away from Kirkwall's shores—or to trap them inside instead.

Varric breathes, _"Shit._ "

And then Isabela shouts and the crew leaps away from the rail and they are moving, moving, but _wrong_ , away from the docks, towards the distant chains that draw further from the water with every breath and not back towards the city where Hawke still waits. The chains' middle third still hides beneath the waves, enough maybe to skim above, and yet every moment another foot pulls free, another yard, and they do not move fast enough—

"No," Fenris says, the word gone with the night winds before it is even given voice. The oars pound against the waves, pound in the back of his skull. Turn back. Turn _back._

Halfway there—a hundred yards yet and the docks growing too small in the distance.

"Full sail!" someone bellows and the _Call_ leaps forward, sudden enough to shake him; he goes hard into Carver and Varric curses again, and this close to the cliffs Fenris can see the giant gears that reel the chains into the hidden feet of the bronze-cast Twins, turning strong and relentless and unstoppable, water streaming thick and frothy from iron that has not seen open air in twenty years. The cliffs tower above them as they surge between the rock, the statues' hidden faces flickering as if even now Meredith's magic struggles to bring them life. Fenris shudders, sick to his bones from something he cannot name, and Isabela throws the wheel to the side as a sailor screams _._

The ship flies forward, oars yanked high and dripping from the sea, and something impossibly enormous _scrapes_ along their keel; the chains hang huge on either side of the ship for a split-second of eternity, thick with kelp and seaweed and flaked with rust, close enough to touch and for an instant he thinks—

And then they are through.

The last of the chain rises in a torrent of water behind them, a smooth hanging curve of impassable iron. Behind them the Gallows smokes, and the city of Kirkwall rises in its solitary tiers from where it has been carved into the cliffs, small and so quiet with distance. Flashes of light here and there still mark the fighting behind its high stone walls, their flaring glow doubled by the black-mirror bay that stretches behind them.

They have left Hawke behind.

They have left—

He has—

 _At your side_ , he thinks, sudden and quiet and still in the middle of the chaos that is Isabela's ship, the one lit truth he can see in the darkness that encroaches upon him with every heartbeat.

He has left Hawke.

It is a relief when the world goes black.

—

The sun has risen in full morning by the time Fenris wakes again. The back of his head pounds in a red, throbbing sting, stretching forward to needle the backs of his eyes; the open wound in his stomach is a duller thing, less agony than ache. He knows before he opens his eyes that there is someone in the room with him, knows too that it is—not Hawke—and he rolls to his side, grimacing, pressing one hand to his face.

All of this. To have survived all of this, and to have lost her _now—_

"Good morning," Carver says, and Fenris looks up.

He has never thought of Carver as overlarge, but the berth makes him a giant. There is barely enough space between his narrow bunk and the flat desk bolted to the wall to fit Carver's undersized wooden chair; his shoulders, when he leans forward, are wide enough to block the daylight from the single porthole set high in the wall. Then Carver turns just enough to let one narrow slat of sun over his temple, and Fenris catches a glance of blue eyes, and his stomach twists—

"Carver," he says instead, flat and hoarse and thicker with pain than he'd like.

"Don't sit up yet. I've strict instructions to flatten you if you do."

Fenris snorts, grimaces again at the flicker of pain in his stomach. White bandages wrap across his bare skin, a thicker pad over the worst of the wound; when he lifts his hand to his head he feels more bandages there, the scent of valerian and elfroot floating free at the touch. Carver hands him a small red-glinting vial.

One of Hawke's. He's watched her prepare them often enough to recognize the wax stopper. He downs the elfroot potion in three swallows without protest, and Carver sits back in his chair, abruptly washed into morning shadow by the light lancing between them. The vial turns over and over in Fenris's fingers, cut facets flashing white and dark again with every motion; then he says, because he has no choice, "She is not here."

"No," Carver says flatly. "She didn't make it."

Urgently: "To the _ship_."

"I—yeah. To the ship."

Fenris closes his eyes, fingers pressed to the bandage over the place in his stomach where his skin knits, where even now Hawke's magic works to restore muscle and sinew and strength. Already the throbbing in his head has begun to fade, and when he carefully pushes his way to a seat on the edge of the bunk Carver does not move to stop him. "We must go back."

"We can't."

"Then I'll go alone."

"No—I mean—"

"You cannot stop me," Fenris warns him. It does not matter that he is Hawke's brother, nor that the damage from his wounds still lingers—

"He means she's not there to find," Isabela says from the doorway.

She looks… _tired_. No trace of a smile, even in the corners of her eyes, and her hair is damp with seaspray and her shirt still stained with blood, and when she leans with a sigh against the little desk Fenris remembers that she fought with them, too, and has not rested since. To leave Hawke in the city must have been just as hard and harder for her, who has left so many times before, who had promised with her blade if not her word not to do so again. He licks his lips. "Explain."

"She's in Wycome. Or will be, at any rate."

" _Wycome—_ "

"It's a Marcher city on the eastern coast, a little more than halfway to Rivain. Don't _frown_ , pet, your face'll stick that way. We've had this contingency plan for ages."

"I was never told."

"The Chantry never blew up before, either. I'm telling you now. She and I talked a long time ago about what might happen if we were separated trying to get out of the city. Barside chatter, you know how it is. We agreed on a little dockside inn I know in Wycome, where hardly anyone looks twice at a stranger and it's still safe enough to walk alone after dark. If she's still alive, she'll already be on her way there."

 _If_ —Fenris's hands knot on his knees. "Do not say such things. We shouldn't have left."

Her look is level, stern as the sea. "If we'd stayed, we'd have been trapped like rats in bilgewater. You know that."

He knows; he turns to Carver, to those impassive eyes, the shoulders too broad for the room. "Your sister—"

"—has been taking care of herself since she was fifteen, and all the rest of us since she was twenty." Carver rises, tall enough to brush the ceiling, a tree-trunk of shadow darkening the room. "And if you think any one of us could have talked her out of going back for someone who needed her help, yourself included, then you're barking mad."

He _knows_. And yet he can't bear the thought… "How far to Wycome?"

"Four days," says Isabela. "Less with a good wind, of course."

"How far on foot?"

Carver rubs the back of his neck. "Nine days, maybe? The Wardens pushed through in a week on our way south once, but we marched full days and took short nights, and there weren't templars looking for us at the time, either."

Fenris stands carefully, gripping the wall for balance; the ship rocks in the trough of a wave and he clenches his teeth, his shifting weight twinging through his wounded stomach. "But she travels alone. The road is too dangerous now."

"What are you suggesting, then? Bank the ship on the nearest shore and start combing every copse for footprints? That'll get the templars on her trail even faster, if they're not there already."

"No," Fenris says, as hard an admission as any, and swallows down the bitterness of knowing that for all his skills and all his _intent_ he has become nothing more than useless. "No. We go to Wycome."

Isabela snorts, though there's no heat to it. "Glad you're onboard, then."

As if there is a choice, he thinks, and closes his eyes. The scent of salt wafts by with Isabela's passing, and Carver's heavy tread creaks over the wooden slats behind her—and then they are gone. He is alone.

Fenris pushes away from the wall, moves to the small porthole set between the paired hurricane lamps. He does not know the coastline that slides by so smoothly behind the glass, the too-green sunlit pines marking some land or another that might hold Hawke, that might _not_ , that might bring him nothing more than an empty inn and a promise with no answer. He has known futility so well over the years; this is worse.

 _I can't bear the thought of living without you_.

Four days.


	2. Chapter 2

The second day brings the _Siren's Call II_ to Ostwick. They do not linger in the city's port, its double walls stern and guarded with Kirkwall's upheaval so recent, and once they are watered and stocked with rations Isabela sails them swiftly to open water again. The seas are calm enough for the tumult in their wake, though Fenris cannot pretend his worry does not eat at him from the inside out. Ostwick does not even bring them news: only the same rumors and the same fears that have plagued the roads since Kirkwall. The Circles are in upheaval; an apostate mage has killed the Grand Cleric; the Champion is gone without word to her whereabouts.

_Venhedis_ , Fenris thinks, and turns away from the port rail. Do not dwell. Do not dwell on it.

As if he could ignore this gnawing ache in his chest.

Refuge, then, must be found in what he can accomplish onboard, and when he fetches his sword from his cabin Carver joins him with his own on the stern deck. Isabela provides the cleaning kit from her own stores—it is fortunate she keeps some supplies in her cabin, considering the urgency of their flight from Kirkwall—and for a long time there is no sound but the hush of cloth on steel and the occasional hollow knock of hilt against wood. Carver sits on the deck itself, eschewing Fenris's choice of a low crate; behind Carver's shoulders, leant against the open rail, Fenris can see the blue-slate waves washing over their wake to erase even that sign of their passing. Only a clear, sunny sky, a thin strip of horizon to the north, and a wind chilled just enough for discomfort.

He grips the worn hilt of his sword absently, fingers finding grooves made by too many years' handling. No sign of Kirkwall left on the horizon either, now. An odd thought, that the kindling which sparked the blaze should vanish so easily behind them.

"What're you looking at?" Carver says at last, twisting to look behind him.

Fenris shakes himself, jerking the cloth he holds over the blade across his knees. "I—nothing in particular."

Carver's sharp glance—and those _eyes_ —tells him that he knows the _nothing_ he means. "Well. At least the water's not been too rough. The last time we came across the Waking Sea Aveline was ill for days."

Fenris snorts. "Varric will do little better, I think."

"True enough. It's been ages since I saw a dwarf look so green around the gills."

"Well." He smoothes the cloth along the blade's flat, surprised by his own smile. "No beard."

"Who hasn't got a beard?" Varric asks, levering himself up the last too-steep step to the stern deck. He is, perhaps, a trifle unsteadier than usual, but his eyes are clear enough for the tension around them, and when he comes to stand by Fenris's crate he does not reach for its support.

"You," Carver says, and shrugs one of those over-broad shoulders. "Though you still look better than Aveline."

"Well, Donnic's got enough beard for the both of them, so I guess I can't complain."

Fenris rolls his eyes, smiles again. They banter a little longer, the sound washing into the waves sliding so smoothly against the hull. It is easier than Fenris expects, all things considered, but perhaps that is the point, that when troubles grow great enough one must live in the smaller moments instead. No matter how Varric needles Carver only responds in kind, or laughs the joke away; more remarkable, it is a _man's_ laugh and not a boy's, and certainly not the sullen thing he remembers from his first years in the city. There is no anger left, nor fear of shadows—but Carver is a Warden, after all, who lives in the dark. He smiles so readily, here, his head inclined to Varric's jibe, his hands steady and sure on his blade. As if—

These Hawkes will be the death of him.

Isabela joins them just after noon, their swords long sharpened and sheathed again. Her eyes are bright, if tired, and she shades them with her hand as she looks out over the ship's wake. "We're making good time," she says to no one, then swivels to lean against the rail beside Carver's shoulder. "As good as can be expected, anyway."

"Then we'll reach Wycome as scheduled."

"As _promised_ ," Isabela says, faintly mocking. "Why, did you doubt me?"

Fenris looks away and does not answer. Isabela knows the cause of his impatience; he knows there is little chance of finding Hawke waiting for them at Wycome as it is. She will not be there. At least another week, if not more—he must be patient. He must think of—anything else.

And when Isabela begins prodding Carver about all the tricks he's learned with the Wardens, Fenris smiles and shakes his head and lets the subject turn where it will. None of them wishes for reassurances, for sympathy or a willing ear; they know the price as well as he, and if her own brother can suffer Isabela's teasing with good humour Fenris will as well. There is no need to speak of the shade that haunts them all, of Anders and Kirkwall and a chantry burning; if Hawke were here she would—

Hawke is not here.

So they speak of Carver, and the Wardens, and Isabela's ship, and do not once mention the world they have left behind them.

—

Fenris sleeps poorly that night and the next, and more than once finds himself staring out his tiny porthole at the starry skies that course above the ship. It had taken him some time to learn the constellations so far south, to find the polar stars that would take him from Tevinter; now that he has, he wonders only how many more times he will count them before they show him home again.

A high bell rings twice through the darkness, and Fenris throws his arm over his eyes. Somewhere above him a board creaks as Isabela's first mate, a tall, quiet woman with broad shoulders and skin as black as tar, calls second watch. His mind is a morass of half-thoughts and dreams of knotted worry, of empty inns, of waiting without an end—

A moment later Fenris heaves up from the narrow bunk and takes the two steps to the porthole, shoving it open with a creak of steel hinges and a gasp that carries too loud in the hush of night. Salt on every twist of wind, near thick enough to cup in his hands; Fenris closes his eyes and drags in a breath, fingers clenching around the rounded sill, forehead pressed to the cool stained wood beside it.

By the time he counts forty, his pulse has slowed again to something less than racing. His grip eases on the wood as a call rises in the distance, and he flicks his eyes up without straightening.

A light on the horizon—then two, and then a dozen. A port. Hercinia, Fenris realizes, and torches to mark the docks, to light the low walls that line the edges of the city. Shadows drift across them here and there, tall black-masted ships with sails furled and anchors dropped, sailors' faint laughter carrying across the calm sea with the evening breezes. A shift in the air—that unmistakable, undefinable _something_ that changed only with a settled city. He presses a hand against his stomach, feeling the barest twinge where the wound was once, all that remains after two days of healing potions and the remnants of Hawke's magic. Only two days, and even that reminder nearly gone—

Kirkwall had felt like that too. That deep, wordless knowledge of a border crossed, of something _different_ in this place that was like no other, even at a distance, even when wholly unaware of the ship that sailed by it in the silent dark. He had not expected it, not of a city he had meant only to be a stopping-place on his southward flight. But the longer one stayed in a place, the harder it became to leave it again.

Or—had that been only Hawke?

Fenris closes his eyes, closes away Hercinia and her ships and her torch-lit docks, and listens to the waves break against the ship until the horizon goes dark once more.

—

They dock at Wycome in the afternoon of the fourth day. Fenris stands at the rail, impatient beyond reason to be ashore and _moving_ , if only to shake the fever of four days in close quarters with too many bodies. Carver stands beside him, a ready ease in every motion just enough to jar against his memories of a dourer boy, though his eagerness to be off the ship is no better hidden than Fenris's own. The dawn had come heavy and dim; even now the air hangs thick around them with the promise of foul weather.

"If I knew _where_ ," Carver says abruptly, and thumps one gloved fist on the rail.

"I know," Fenris says, swallowing frustration, chafing at every word. His shirt sticks to the small of his back with humidity despite the slit cut to vent it from Tevinter's heat. "Isabela said it would not be much longer."

"How much _longer_ is that? Thalia said—"

"I said to be patient," Isabela's first mate tells them both, approaching with Varric at her heels. Her dark arms glimmer with perspiration as she reaches for the gangplank, tall enough that even when she bends Fenris must look up at her. "The captain will be ready when she is ready."

Carver makes a sharp gesture at the thick cloud-grey sky, at the cool winds picking up off the sea at their backs. "It's about to rain. If it's all the same with the _captain_ , I'd rather be inside when it starts."

"Soon," Thalia says, unperturbed, and slings a coil of rope to her shoulder. "To rush now is to invite trouble later."

"Oh, give me a—"

"Enough," Fenris says, enough warning in his tone that Carver subsides. "A few minutes more."

Varric sighs, rubbing one hand across the back of his neck. "You know it's too soon, elf."

The words—ache. "I know."

"Doesn't mean we can't hope," Carver says staunchly, and that stings more than any other. Fenris shies from hope too quickly, bitten so often he cannot trust it; and yet here is Hawke's brother, this grown man in Warden blues who lives at the edge of evil, speaking of hope as if he believes it worth the risk. If it were only so easy.

"Of course," he says aloud, and Carver claps a heavy hand to his shoulder.

"That's the spirit."

"Of course," Fenris grumbles, shrugging off the unexpected weight, and Varric grins—but before he can offer some pointed observation Isabela comes trotting across the deck towards them at last, hair tossing in the rising winds, her jewelry's glint dulled by the muted daylight.

"I'm ready," she says, the words more cheerful than Fenris expects, and pauses only a moment to check her daggers in their sheaths. "Thalia, the ship is yours until I come back."

"Aye." She steps aside, the gangplank cleared at last; Isabela strides forward without speaking, Fenris falling into place at her shoulder, Carver and Varric following him. The brief moment of levity is gone as if it has never been; now there is only single-minded purpose and the grim realization that of all them, Isabela knows best as he does the dangers of hope.

Wycome is no giant port, but they are not ten steps onto the pier before the crowds begin to jostle them. Every berth is full to bursting; some traders have even eschewed the markets and set their shops on the dockside streets in order to pander to the crush of people. Some are refugees—Fenris would know that hollow-eyed resignation in any face—but the majority appears to be merchants and sailors with honest business if not honest hands, and every third word from their mouths is _Kirkwall_.

"I heard," says one, wide-eyed astonishment in his face as he leans closer to his passing friend, "the Chantry _burned_ , and it was mages that did it—"

"I heard the templars lost the Circle—"

"These _people_ ," a woman snaps, lifting her basket out of the way of a running urchin, "as if they didn't have anywhere else to get underfoot of everybody!"

"Kirkwall's lost order—they say Ostwick and Hercinia are already overrun. They'll be flying back to Ferelden as quick as you like, mark my words."

"I'll mark them when I can walk in my streets again— _move_ , child!"

The boy jerks backwards, nearly colliding with Fenris; he grips the elf's shoulder until his feet are beneath him again, and after an instant's wide-eyed stare the child vanishes into the throng.

"Check your coinpurse," Carver says in an undertone, but Varric shakes his head between them.

"He had hands like wood. You'd have felt him lift it."

Fenris does so all the same, relieved to find it intact, and does not lift his fingers from it again. Isabela's bandanna is a beacon in the crush of strangers; Fenris keeps close to it as he can, keeps track of the voices, too, old habit picking words from the senseless clamor.

"I heard the Champion overthrew the Knight-Commander."

"I heard she's been an apostate all this time—"

"I heard the chaos of the aftermath caught up with her, and she died—"

Fenris whirls in place, but there is no way of discovering the speaker—there is only Varric harried by the taller multitudes, and Carver's furrowed brow, and a faceless mass of humanity seething in their wake. Only rumors. Only a rumor of a rumor—

"Fenris," Isabela shouts, and he turns again to see her on the far side of the street, one hand lifted above her head towards the weathered building's creaking wooden sign, its fading green-painted letters declaring the place to be The Gull's Nest _._ It is only a moment's fight to reach her; then they are inside in relative quiet, just as the first raindrops begin to patter against the glass window that looks out onto the docks. A few patrons stand just inside, the inn too small for the same overcrowding of the docks, though not one of them offers Fenris more than a cursory glance.

"Here," Isabela adds, leading them towards the desk at the end of the clean, worn foyer; an elderly elf sits behind it, his brown hair grizzled grey, a small pair of spectacles perched on the end of his nose.

He straightens on his stool, eyes flashing with interest; he flattens a gnarled hand across the open ledger before him and says, "The Nest welcomes you."

"Our thanks," Fenris says shortly. "Have you a woman here? Of my height, with dark hair, arrived within the last day?"

A flicker of suspicion. "I don't make a habit of interfering in my patrons' affairs."

"She's my _sister_ ," Carver says, muscling forward, enough desperation in his tone to make the man flinch. "We're supposed to meet her here. You've got to tell us."

He pauses, then relents, adjusting his spectacles uneasily. "I've had no new lodgers in the past three days, and none that sound like your friend. Though I hear Kirkwall ought to be sending refugees our way—Fereldan transplants, I'm sure. Those people never settle anymore."

"Letters?" Isabela suggests, leaning against the desk with a curving smile. "For passengers of the _Siren's Call,_ or for any one of us. It can't hurt much to check."

"I suppose not," the man sighs, and sighs again as they give him their names. Fenris offers "Leto," too, though the word is strange in his mouth, and ignores the odd look Carver throws him. The innkeeper flips through a dozen envelopes, his mouth pursed, and Fenris knows before he speaks what answer he will give. "No letters," he says, not without sympathy, and replaces the stack into its drawer. "Take a room instead?"

Isabela glances at the glass beading with rain. "Not for me. I'll stay on my ship."

"Two, then," Fenris says, and in short order he and Carver have been installed across a narrow hallway from Varric.

He is not surprised. He is _not_ surprised; he knew this would happen, knew that there was precious little chance Hawke would beat them here. There is no disappointment if there was no hope first.

Carver stretches, tosses his one bag to the small bed on the left of the room. Its twin lies along the right wall—Fenris's now, he supposes—but Fenris crosses instead to the square glass window that overlooks the street. The crowds have thinned with the downpour, rains falling heavy enough to hide the ships in their harbor, and when the door to their room opens Fenris is not surprised to hear Varric grumbling beneath his breath about the weather's turn. A flash of brilliant blue as Isabela's bandanna vanishes between two buildings—and then only grey, stone and wall and roof and passersby alike, all color washing away with the rain.

"Give her time," Carver says quietly behind him.

Fenris doesn't want to give her time. He wants to shake her until her teeth rattle for worrying him like this, wants to break the necks of whomever keeps her away, wants to hold her so closely he can't breathe and neither can she. And he can do none of these things because she has not _come_.

Instead he says, "I know," and lets it rest.

—

Varric sends out a half-dozen runners the next morning after the rain has cleared. Not for Hawke, he explains at Fenris's dubious look—but they are blind without news, and if nothing else Kirkwall will provide the loudest voice in the search.

Fenris watches the urchins vanish into the crowd, laughing and calling to each other, and wonders if Varric knows how bare the worry is in his face.

—

"I have a sister," he tells Carver one afternoon over a light dinner, at a tavern far enough from the docks that no scent of fish-oil carries.

"I didn't know you had any family."

"Neither did I."

"Hm," says Carver, prodding at his beef. "What was she like?"

Fenris hesitates. He tries, "Unhappy. Angry."

"At you?"

"In part."

Carver says, "Hm," again, and flicks a bit of tomato away from the plate. "Well. Could be worse."

"Oh?"

"Have you ever made her so angry she hit you square in the eye and then spelled the bruise to make it stay, even though Lothering's Summerday festival was the next morning?"

Danarius, Fenris thinks, and says, "No."

"Then there's hope for the two of you yet."

—

The innkeeper learns to shake his head the moment Fenris enters the foyer. _No letters—_ a familiar refrain soon enough, not for Leto or Isabela or the _Call_ —only hour after hour after hour of silence.

It is easy to tell himself not to hope, that to guard himself will ease the sting of the innkeeper's pity, that every day without news is a day where Hawke might yet be safe.

He hopes every time.

—

The third night in Wycome, Carver rolls over on his narrow bed and props his head on one hand. "I think," he says, his voice oddly flat in the small room, "that I can't stay here much longer."

Fenris, still sitting against his own headboard, looks over in surprise. The room is dark enough without candles, lit only by what faint moonlight trickles in through the window; he can make out a bit of Carver's face, and the shift of one well-muscled arm, but his eyes are lost to shadow. "Why?"

"I'm a _Warden_ ," he says. "I have duties. And a commanding officer, who is no doubt starting to get increasingly unhappy with my absence."

"But…" But, what? _But you have a sister who may or may not be dead_. As if Carver were unaware of it.

"Don't sound so sour," he adds, and rolls flat to his back, staring up at the dim ceiling. "I'll stay as long as I can. But eventually they'll find me, or I'll be here too long as it is, and I'll have to report in."

"I understand."

"Mostly." Carver laughs, passing a hand over his eyes; then, without looking, he says, "She's not dead, you know."

_That_ jerks Fenris from his careful stillness, the words a jolt of lightning in a cloudless night. "How—"

"I don't know." His hand falls from his face to his chest, his brows pinched. "I felt it when Beth died. My sister. Twin, actually. And when my mother died—I knew something was wrong then, too." His eyes meet Fenris's, suddenly sharp. "She's still alive."

He desperately wishes to believe him. "I… hope you are correct."

Carver laughs again. "I hope you are correct," he repeats, mocking without cruelty. "You haven't changed one bit, Fenris."

"Is that so?" His mouth turns up despite himself. "A relief, then, that you are nearly half as grating as I remember."

"We can duel at dawn, if you've got the sword to back up your insults."

"If you can bear to rise for it. I recall your morning complaints all too well."

"Shut up and go to sleep, old man."

"Old—!" He is genuinely affronted and surprised to be so, and Carver pulls his pillow over his face in ineffective mask for his smirk.

His voice is muffled through the padding. "Come on. You've got to be at least fifty."

"I doubt it."

"Forty."

Fenris snorts.

"Thirty, then."

"If thirty is old, you must be middle-aged."

"Touchy, you are." Carver is quiet a moment, then says, "My sister wrote me she was going to throw you a nameday celebration. Since you didn't know when yours was."

Fenris leans forward against his bent knee, brow furrowing against the dark. "She mentioned something of it in passing."

"She invited me."

"You would have been welcome."

Carver stirs, moves to his side and to his back again, stares at the ceiling and the far wall and the window between their beds. Then: "Maybe you're not quite the same as I remember."

He does not know how to answer and so says nothing. This silence is different from the last one, more pensive, and eventually Carver turns his back to Fenris and pulls the blankets to his neck. With nothing further forthcoming Fenris eases into his own bed at last, abruptly tired, but just as he settles Carver's voice murmurs out of the darkness, almost lost to the rustle of bedclothes and the distant rush of the sea.

"For what it's worth, I'm okay with it. That it was you."

Fenris hesitates a long moment; then he gives a short, sharp nod that Carver cannot see, and turns to his side, and goes to sleep.

—

The first of Varric's runners return. Nothing they have not known before: Kirkwall seethes, the Circles rise, Hawke remains lost.

He _misses_ her.


	3. Chapter 3

When the long day goes by  
And I do not see your face,  
The old wild, restless sorrow  
Steals from its hiding place.

My day is barren and broken,  
Bereft of light and song,  
A sea beach bleak and windy  
That moans the whole day long.

To the empty beach at ebb tide,  
Bare with its rocks and scars,  
Come back like the sea with singing,  
And light of a million stars.  
— _Ebb Tide,_ Sara Teasdale

—

Ten days after Kirkwall burned, Carver leaves Wycome. Fenris walks with him to the docks, the early misting air chilled enough that few others walk the streets despite the clear day promised behind it. His ship is a small ferry with a westerly course bound eventually for Cumberland, and when they reach the quay Isabela leans on the roped piling at the end of the pier, her hair loose, one eyebrow arched.

"You didn't think you were going to sneak away from _me_ , did you?"

"'Course not," Carver says, a corner of his mouth lifting. "Come to see me off?"

"More like I came to see the ship off."

"A ferry?"

"I like _all_ ships, sweet thing. An old, steady girl like this ought to be celebrated every once in a while."

"It's a good thing she's got you, then."

Isabela grins at that, but when Carver sticks out his hand she pulls him in for a brief embrace. "Don't do anything stupid," she says, stretching on her toes to tousle his hair. "At least not while I'm not there to see it."

"Aye, Captain." Carver shifts the weight of his sword on his broad shoulders, adjusts his one bag on his hip. His gaze flicks to Fenris. "I'll write."

"As will I," Fenris says.

"Oh—and before I forget—" Carver fishes in his bag a moment, his ears flushing pink; then he hands a sealed, addressed envelope to Fenris without quite meeting his look. "This is, ah. For Merrill. I meant to post it here but I forgot, and it's not like the Wardens get regular mail. If you don't mind…"

"Of course."

"Thanks," says Carver less awkwardly. "And thanks for before. And for watching out for my sister, even if she's not here. I hope you'll give her the earful I can't when she finally bothers to show up."

Isabela laughs. "That, I can _personally_ guarantee. Now get on your ferry before she leaves without you."

Carver smiles, his eyes dropping once to the crest still knotted at Fenris's hip, and for a moment there is something of grief in his eyes, too—and then he salutes with one fist over his heart and is up the gangplank, one more face on a sparse rail of weary travelers. He waves to them once, and then the crowd swallows him into nothing.

Fenris and Isabela wait where they stand until the ferry pulls away from the dock, then turn together towards the city again. The walk is pleasant enough if without purpose, and when they pass the _Call_ 's berth without Isabela stopping, Fenris rolls his shoulders and follows her lead. "How has the ship fared?"

"Itching to be away," Isabela says frankly, lacing her hands over her head and stretching. "But the crew's paid and they follow orders, and they'll wait a while longer if I ask."

"How much longer?" Fenris asks, but even as the words slip free he knows it is a question without an answer. He shakes his head, cutting off Isabela's response, and says instead, "They seem a good crew."

"They're a bunch of swindling pirates, and don't think I don't see you changing the subject."

His mouth curves in something like a smile, but Isabela does not press him again, and soon enough the conversation turns to safer things, to the weather and the skies and all things other than that which weighs heaviest on both their minds. Isabela keeps it light as they move through the streets, the sky brightening with day, the last of the morning mists burning into nothing as the first markets throw open their shutters and the first sailors stumble bleary-eyed from the depths of bars and brothels alike.

For all its quiet dawns, Wycome wakes swiftly enough. Not ten minutes have passed before the streets have begun to fill again, humans and elves and dwarves alike giving rise to the pleasant commotion of a thriving city. Eventually, Fenris turns them both northward again in the rough direction of the Gull's Nest—he is _hungry_ if nothing else—but just as they pass the open square before Wycome's small Chantry the hard knock of a hammer on wood slices through the milieu. A Chanter's Board, he realizes, and a knot of onlookers already gathered around the templar standing before it—

Fenris's stomach drops like a stone.

Isabela insists they wait until the templar leaves. It is a handful of minutes and an eternity at the same time, and the instant the flash of sunlight on steel vanishes into the dim halls of the Chantry Fenris strides forward, shouldering aside the crowd without thought, Isabela a silent shadow at his back.

A crude drawing of Hawke, spare but recognizable, and large block letters beneath it, simple enough for even his limited literacy: _WANTED—FOR QUESTIONING—BY ORDER OF DIVINE JUSTINIA V._ And then in smaller print, just below: _Reward 100 sovereigns for information leading to arrest of the Champion of Kirkwall,_ and beneath that a wax-stamped flaming eye, the mark of the Seekers of Truth.

"The Divine," says someone to Fenris's left, the words curiously loud through the hard-thumping beat of his heart. "They'll have an Exalted March out on Kirkwall next, the way I see it."

"If the Circles rise up, they won't have a choice."

Fenris curls his lip, blood hot under his skin; a moment later he has the crumpled poster in one hand and is halfway back through the crowd already, ignoring the stares and whispers and open curiosity that follows closer with every step.

"Don't worry," Isabela says brightly somewhere behind him, "they'll have a new one up in an hour," and then her hand is on his shoulder, hurrying him even faster away from the growing traffic of the streets. By the edge of the square he can see clearly again; by the time they turn onto the street of The Gull's Nest his breath comes even enough to give his thoughts some rational order.

He should not have torn down the sheet. Any attention now would be unwanted, and if Hawke has truly fallen under the eye of the Seekers such careless anger on his own part will do little to help her.

And yet—and _yet—_

His hand clenches around the parchment, and when Isabela opens the door to Varric's room he thrusts it at him with a wordless snarl. " _Look_ ," he snaps when he can speak again, the words tangling with rage. "Look. They _hunt_ her, dwarf. Like an animal to be run to ground."

Varric pulls it from his hand, pulls a slender pair of pince-nez from a pocket of his duster. Fenris has seen him truly grim maybe a handful of times in all their years of friendship; this is easily one of the worst. "When did this go up?"

"Ten minutes ago. Fifteen."

"It's been ten days since the Chantry. If nothing else, it means they haven't found her yet."

" _Yet—"_

"Easy, sweet," Isabela says behind him, and as much as he would prefer to put his fist through something solid Fenris forces himself to breathe slowly, calmly, relaxing with conscious effort until the lyrium goes quiet again.

"I do not think," he says through his teeth, "that we should stay here and do _nothing_ while the Divine's private army flushes Hawke out of hiding. Not when there's something that could be done."

"And what would you suggest?" Varric's voice is not unkind, but the question chafes like sackcloth against a blister. Fenris hasn't the faintest idea, save to retrace their steps on foot and pray for word—but that is precisely what the Seekers do even now, and Fenris is not so blind with eagerness as to think they can best the champions of Orlais's Chantry with impunity. Varric sees through him too easily, as always, and the dwarf waves his own words away with a hand. "Not to worry, elf. Hawke's made her way out of tougher scrapes before. No news is good news right now, and until we hear otherwise we've got to trust she'll hold up her end of the bargain."

Fenris disagrees, but there is little point in saying so. Every day Hawke fails to come is a worse sign of worse news; he feels as though he hangs from a cliff by his fingers, each passing hour crumbling more of the earth from his hold, and yet each morning he still claws a new grip out of some tenacity he hardly recognizes. He is sick to death of waiting, sick of worry, sick _with_ worry. Varric spreads the broadsheet across his desk, his brow furrowing at the lifeless face staring back at him.

Ten days since Kirkwall burned, and Hawke still has not come.

—

_To my friend Sebastian—_

_By now you have heard of the unrest spreading from Kirkwall. We have left the city to await the calm after the storm although the news seems to have caused ripples of disquiet, no matter where we go. This is as unwelcome to me as I am sure it is to you._

_I hesitated to write you of this but I can see no other recourse. Hawke was meant to meet us here, in Wycome when we were separated after the last battle in the Gallows. It has been a fortnight since and she still has not come. Nothing would keep her, but illness or imprisonment as I'm sure you are aware, but we have heard nothing of either since we have been in this city._

_I trust you will not lie to me when I ask you to tell me if you have found her. I know Starkhaven is far from her intended path, but your anger was great enough at our last parting that I cannot help but wonder if you have indeed made good on your threat, to bring your armies south. Kirkwall stands in enough upheaval that it would prove an easy mark. I can only hope that the words you once spoke to me as a man of peace have found voice again._

_I send you this letter in good faith regardless. I have not had so many friendships that I can easily withstand the loss of one so valued. I hope this letter finds you well._

_If there is to be a reply it may be addressed to the Gull's Nest on Runner Street in Wycome._

_Fenris_

_—_

_Fenris—_

_My very dear friend! Before anything else, I must offer you my humblest and sincerest apologies for the manner in which I removed myself from Kirkwall. I cannot tell you how it's haunted me, knowing those who have so often helped me without thought for their own gain, those I considered my family, might wish to have nothing more to do with me. And rightly so, considering how I acted. The only defense that I can offer is that grief is not a thing of sense, and I fear I lost mine with the death of a woman I cared for as a second mother. Worse, that the cause of her death would be a man I thought to be, if not a friend, at least an ally._

_But this is outside your purpose. I regret to tell you that Hawke has not been seen within a day's ride of Starkhaven in any direction. If you would have the truth of it, even if I wished to find her I could not spare the men. Every hand I have is bent to the security of the throne, and I can find precious little strength to fuel my own petty vengeances. I pray daily for the safety of all the companions I was forced to leave—_

_There. My pen has made me a hypocrite. I have left these lines all morning in the hopes of gathering the will to throw them away, but you have always been forthright with me._

_My anger at Hawke is a frightening thing, Fenris. How long have I known her, that in the span of ten minutes I should be so eager to abandon our years of friendship? I know she played little part in Anders's scheme (and how it galls me, to even write the man's name), and yet every treasured memory I have is colored now by Elthina's death. If I could spare the men they would hunt every road from here to the Minanter for any sign of either of them. It is easy to apologize for my anger in a letter when I know that I secretly believe that anger wholly justified._

_A man of peace. What know I of that? Elthina was right to keep me from vows; I am not fit for anything but driving my arrows in the opposite direction of my heart._

_But—enough of this. I have not seen Hawke. If I do… if nothing else, know that she will never be in danger of harm. I suspect our shouting match will shake the ancient halls of Starkhaven to the ground, but Hawke has never been one to obfuscate when a straightforward blow to the head would do. I swear I will write you if she is seen, but for now, for the sake of her friendship and yours, I will not seek her out or hinder her travels to where you wait._

_If you should ever find your own path to Starkhaven, however, know that there will always be a place of honor for you here. Maker keep you safe, my dear friend, and Hawke with you._

_Sebastian_

—

Someone is shaking him.

A hand—familiar—but he is so _tired_ and his eyes will not open, and instead he turns to his back and drags in a breath through his nose. "What is it?" he says, though the words are rough and distant to his own ears.

The hand gentles on his shoulder. "Wake up."

Hawke's voice.

Something tightens just behind his heart and Fenris lifts his eyebrows, struggling to see, struggling to parse any hint of detail from the pale dawn blue washing through the tiny room of the inn. So blurry he cannot make out the face—and then the hand comes carefully to his cheek, brushing the hair from his temple, glancing over his lower lip. "Hawke—"

"Fenris," she says gently, bending nearer, and he still cannot make out her face but her _voice_ , and her hands, and the shift of the mattress as her weight settles at his side; he tries to reach for her but his arms are limp lifeless things trapped by faded sheets. "Fenris, I made it. I'm back."

_I waited,_ he wants to say, but the words tangle on his tongue; he says again, "Hawke," and he can almost _see_ her, almost—

" _Fenris_ ," she breathes, and then her lips are on his brow, on the curve of his cheek, coming to rest so lightly against his own they hurt. He cants his head to meet her, feels her hair prickle against his jaw, but he doesn't care, doesn't _care—_ he's waited and she's _come_ and he—

Hawke tastes like blood.

His eyes open at last. Hawke's mouth moves over his one last time, then slides to his jaw and downward—but it is not a caress, not anymore; it's the slow heavy drag of dead weight, and when he grips her shoulders her skin is ice-cold. His heart hammers against his ribs as he tries to shift her, to _shake_ her, but she does not move even to breathe, not once, and her hair grows brittle and breaks with every desperate movement. He cannot—and then he is sitting at last and she is fallen against his chest, and his hands lift in disbelieving dread to the slender ash arrow-shafts protruding from her back, just beneath the bone of her left shoulder. Her shirt is black with old blood.

"Sorry," she whispers into his collar, and something hot and wet smears against his skin. "I tried."

His fingers are red to the first knuckle, obscuring even the lyrium. He is sick with horror, blood pounding behind his eyes, and he can't—he can't—he _can't—_ he is over the edge and there are no rocks at the bottom to catch him or kill him, only an endless fall.

She collapses into herself, into him, withering like a thousand years of decay have come to eat her all at once; the husk lets out a thin rattling sigh and _flinches—_

Fenris wakes at last, bolt upright in the silence of his room at the inn. Still wholly dark—barely midnight—his shout still raw in his throat and clinging to the low beams of the ceiling. His sheets have stuck to him with cold sweat; he shoves them away with shaking hands, barely able to stand through the terror still rocketing through his veins with every step, barely able to draw breath through the tight knot of terror in his throat. He has known nightmares for many years and woken roughly from them, too, but _this—_

He cannot bear this. He is not strong enough.

"It is not real," he says to nothing. His hands fist at his sides, his knees locked in a paroxysm of fear he cannot control. "It is _not_ real."

_Of course not_ , Hawke would say, but the memory of her voice is too near the memory of death to bring him comfort now. He sees again her face, the unbelievable violation of arrows spearing from her skin, feels the heavy dead weight of her body crushing his chest. If she has—while he has been _here_ , doing nothing, helpless and useless and ignorant of whatever might have—no. _No_.

Fenris stalks to the washbasin, ignoring the cloth in favor of his bare hands. The water is chilled with evening and that helps some; the clear air helps more when he thrusts open the window, struggling three times with the latch, heaving for every breath. _It is not real._

_I tried._

His curse scalds the night, the dim, empty streets below impassive witness to the white knuckles locked around the sill. Past the distant docks the shadows of ship-masts rock gently with the ebbing tide, blackening narrow strips of stars into nothing behind their silhouette; the sea beats a constant wash against his ears, numbing and calming at once, and Fenris closes his eyes until the sound fills him from the inside out, until there is not even an echo of Hawke's gasps left to his memory.

He turns, sinks to sit against the wall just beneath the window. He does not move again until morning.

—

The day dawns with rain. It's a slow, steady drizzle that does not slacken the whole morning; by noon Fenris is restless enough to brave even the wet, and with a short word to Varric and an oiled cloak over his shoulders, he sets out to anywhere that is not the four tight walls of the room he shared with Carver. Gutter water splashes with every bare-footed step and he winces, drawing the hood further down his face—and somewhere in his mind is a faint amazement that he should don such a thing for _protection_ now and not for secrecy—but he does not slacken his pace, sixteen days of restless anxiety burning in his blood.

Save a few stragglers hurrying for shelter, he is the only soul on the street. It suits him well enough, this solitude; with the rain in his ears and the damp of his feet and the stubborn chill teasing at the gaps of his cloak he can spare little mind for worry. The markets are closed with no patrons, their tent covers furled tightly against their stands, and when Fenris turns at the end of the street it is only to another deserted road, and another after that, and another, no sound but rainwater on cobblestone and shingle, mist rising pale and thick in the distance to wash away even the shops and homes from their moorings.

Hawke is not dead.

Her brother would have felt it— _Fenris_ would have felt it, had some blow been strong enough to strike her down even at this distance. He has trusted her since the month they met, though the nature of that trust might have changed; he will trust her now, even in this, even through silence. She waited for him for three years. He can wait a little longer.

All roads in Wycome lead to the docks, and without Fenris minding his feet he finds himself striding along the wharf soon enough. The water of the Waking Sea is rough with froth, grey spindrift tossed over the piers with every breaking wave, and Fenris lifts a shoulder against the brittle bite—

A figure in the distance. Tall, and broad of shoulder, and—waiting—for an instant he is caught with indecision, but the figure lifts a hand to beckon as if it knows him, and as he walks closer he realizes it is the _Call_ it stands beside, her sleek lines familiar even in the blurring cloak of rain.

"Thalia," he says at last, drawing near enough to recognize her, too, and rainwater trickles down the bridge of his nose.

But something in her face— "There's news," she tells him.

His gut turns to ice. She bends towards him, her close-braided hair dripping, the skin beneath her eyes smudged even darker with tiredness. How long has he been gone? A quarter-hour? A half? He sucks in a breath—

"The dwarf sent a runner," she continues, "for the captain. For you, too, but you couldn't be found. I was sent after you—"

"Where?" he chokes out. "Where?"

"The Nest," she says, and he runs.

—

He knows. He knows the instant he steps into the hall what they will say, knows even before they lift their heads to him with grief in their eyes and sorrow pinching their mouths what news the cold-huddled runner has brought. Isabela crumples the letter in her hand; Varric thumbs Bianca's haft in short, repetitive strokes, a worry stone without the shape.

"Cullen's put out notice," Varric says, his voice flat. "Someone's claimed the bounty on Hawke."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recommended listening: [Love So Alike](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPGl0Byp67E) from the Tristan & Isolde OST, and [A King's Service](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lle4IcYb4TI) from the same.

The voyage back to Kirkwall is a blur. He knows they travel faster than before, knows that Isabela sleeps next to none, her tense figure at the stern wheel or beside it at his every glance upward. Every day brings either rain or the threat of it; and yet Fenris cannot bring himself to abandon the starboard rail, his eyes trained on the horizon that slides closer to Kirkwall with every hour. Interrogation, certainly—at worst a swift trial and sentencing. Isabela knows the passageways to and from the Gallows better than he, and if they must fly—well, he has been _fugitivus_ before.

Thalia begins to bring his meals to the rail. He eats what he can bear and sends away the rest, and if she is too patient with him he cannot bring himself to care. Varric joins him on the second day, without speaking, his arms folded across his chest, his broad mouth unsmiling. The sailors sweep around them in waves, shouts ringing out in a language of their own, Isabela the masthead of them all.

He had forgotten how close a companion fear could be. To live like this, impatient for every morning and every night, his hands always cold, the lyrium sparking with every too-sharp gesture—to be afraid so long that the fear numbs, dulled like a stone beaten down by the sea, constant and without end. He had forgotten.

Then, on the third day—

He sees it at the same moment the cry comes from the crow's nest: " _Kirkwall_!" The Viscount's tower tallest on the tor, the faint pale smears of Hightown's walls, the rest of the city tumbling down the cliffs as if spilled by an outstretched hand. A gap in the roofs, where the white stone of the Chantry once shone; already the wound is less than it was, scarring over like the gash on Fenris's stomach, less tender with every touch.

They have been gone twenty days.

"The chains are down," Varric says at last, and Fenris follows his pointing finger to the harbor's mouth where the enormous bronze Twins still guard the city. Their chains are gone, though, sunken once more into the sea where they will hide another half-century, forgotten as easily as a shadow. The water is calmer too than the night they'd fled, green again in daylight, and Fenris closes his eyes against the memory.

Isabela guides them directly to the Gallows. Its small pier is hardly meant for ships of this size, but Fenris has never known Isabela to be easily deterred by such things, and in a matter of moments they have pulled carefully alongside a tiny longboat and its bewildered sailor.

The Gallows is at once just as and nothing like he remembers. Its high, sloping walls stand the same as ever, the iron gratings that mark every archway of the courtyard still just as forbidding—and yet there are signs of battle, too, smears of soot over grey stone and broken masonry swept into hasty piles, twice the templars Fenris remembers hurrying about with hands on hilts and low, urgent voices. Even the few market-stands are closed, Solivitus's shop empty and abandoned.

A templar tries to stop them halfway across the courtyard. Fenris ignores him to push past without ceremony; he squawks something to his fellows and a few others trot forward to block their way, hesitantly reaching for blades as Isabela throws them a dangerous grin. Bianca creaks on Varric's back and Fenris grimaces without stopping—they have no time for this—

"I told you to _halt!_ " the man shouts, and the Gallows air fills with the clear ringing of a drawn sword.

Fenris lets out a wordless snarl, unable to quiet the lyrium as he flexes his hands at his sides. He cannot shed blood here, not if he means to be of any use to Hawke inside, but this stranger will _not_ keep him here an instant longer.

"Stand down," snaps a new voice, a woman's voice. Fenris recognizes her, light brown hair cut severely at her chin, a greatsword across her back and officer's bars on her arm, but he cannot place the name; she glares at the knot of templars barring their path and says again, "Stand _down_. All of you."

"Lieutenant Ruvena," the man says, sword lowering jerkily to his side, "these people just barged in, and they're armed—"

Ruvena. Keran's friend. He remembers her now. "I have eyes, Corporal," she says, and turns her back to him. To Fenris directly, she says, "You've heard."

"Yes."

"Follow me. Cullen's been expecting you."

They do. The templars part without another word, though their leader glares at Fenris as they pass through the barred gate into the halls of the Gallows proper. The sun is high enough with noon that some light spills down into the small square yard set central to the galleries, glinting off polished armor and stone alike, though it brings little warmth with it. They turn left, then left again into the narrow hallway where Fenris remembers the offices to be—and there is Orsino's, the door locked and bolted, but Ruvena leads them the other way into the open door across—

He sees the dog first.

Or rather, the mabari sees _him_ , and though it nearly bowls him over in greeting there is no joy to it, only tight anxious circles around his legs and a whine too high for such an enormous beast. He puts one hand on Toby's head, glad beyond reason to see him yet living. If he lives, then Hawke…

" _Oh_ ," says Merrill, and he looks up in time to see both hands come over her mouth. "Fenris," she says through her fingers, and then, "Varric— _Isabela,_ " and as her face crumples he recognizes the signs of long weeping, the lines of grief at her eyes and at her mouth. Isabela is already moving forward to take her in her arms; Varric goes next, one wide hand spread comfortingly over Merrill's back, but Fenris is rooted in place, the dog pressed tight to his leg, his heart thudding in his chest. Something is wrong. Something is—

"Wait here," Ruvena says, her voice curt, and she crosses the small, sunlit office that was once Meredith's into the open rooms beyond it. The desk is much the same, though cluttered with more reports than Meredith ever allowed; three half-empty cups of tea sit forgotten on one corner, as if their owner had never been long enough in one place to finish them—and then Cullen emerges at last, no armor, only a wrinkled uniform and enough weariness in his eyes for three men. He hands a handkerchief to Merrill, who wraps it tightly around her trembling hands; to Fenris he says, "I'm glad you came."

He is going to come apart, like cloth frayed into nothing. "Where is Hawke?"

Cullen's hand twitches as if he would like to reach for his face, but the motion dies as quickly as it began. "How much have you heard?"

"The bounty has been claimed. Where is _Hawke_ , templar?"

Now Cullen does move, reaching for the support of his desk against clear sorrow. "Bring it in," he says to Ruvena, and the dog begins to whine.

She goes away and comes back again with a wrapped bundle in her arms. Fenris cannot breathe properly, the room too quiet for the pounding blood in his ears, the lyrium singing up and down his arms in fear. He does not want to know. He does not want—whatever Ruvena places too-carefully on Cullen's desk, whatever he too-gently unwraps—he _does not_ _want this—_

Hawke's staff. Her father's staff, broken into three pieces.

The sharp shredded wood has snagged the cloth; Ruvena smoothes it in an unnecessary motion, then steps back, as if Fenris might wish a closer look at this death of all his hopes. Cullen says from very far away, "A man brought it in near a week ago. I'm—sorry."

"What did he say?" Varric's voice, too sharp.

Cullen sets his jaw. "That Serah Hawke is dead."

—

Fenris listens.

The man was a trader, caught on the road too late at night halfway between Ostwick and Hercinia. No inn in sight and rumors of new slavers in the woods—and then in the distance he had seen the dim glow of a campfire, and he had turned towards it. A woman had tended it alone where the trees thinned on a low bluff, backed only by cliffside and water, and not wishing to startle her, he'd called out before coming into the firelight.

She'd offered to share it. Of course she had. She'd had a few fish on the spit and he'd brought bread in his pack, and they'd made a meal of it and company of the rest. She told him she was coming from Kirkwall; he was going the other way, though he'd been glad enough their paths crossed. She'd an easy smile, he said, though she'd kept the fire between them. He remembered her laugh.

They'd heard rustling in the brush just before midnight. He'd pulled a shortsword and she a staff, though it didn't look much to bludgeon with, and just as they'd stood a pack of lean, rangy mabari had stumbled from the brush. Not many of them, maybe four or five, but enough to kill and enough to put fear in his heart. He'd gotten one in the first attack, though he'd been distracted by fire-flickers in the corner of his eye more than once, but the pit was banked and no other flame in sight. One more had been on him almost the instant the first fell—he'd had the teeth-marks still scabbed across his forearm—and then with no blow to cause it the dog had been flung away from him.

A mage, he'd said, astonished and afraid. She'd still had her hand out, her eyes on him, one mabari already dead at her feet. And then he'd seen the last of them in a low crouch behind her at the cliff's edge, eyes glittering, and though he'd tried to call a warning it was faster than he could move. They'd grappled only an instant, the whole thing so quick he could hardly understand what had happened—and then the beast had lunged and she'd stepped backwards and there was only—empty space.

She hadn't screamed, he said. Only a queer quick gasp, and the dog's yelp, and a sudden, dull thump.

The cliffside had been near-impossible to climb down in the dark. He'd found both her and the dog in the rocks at the bottom, her head twisted just to the side, her hand outstretched for the cliff. Her staff lay beside her broken into three pieces. He hadn't recognized the Champion from the broadsheet until that moment, when there'd been no smile on her face; she'd saved his life.

He'd taken the staff as the tide began to rise to the rocks. He couldn't carry the Champion with him, nor the dog; he'd climbed carefully to the top and then waited, guarding her in the dark, until the sea took her out of his sight. Then he'd thrown the other dogs into the water, and doused the fire, and turned on his heel for Kirkwall.

She'd saved his life, he said. And she'd died for it.

—

Yes, Cullen tells Varric when he asks, he's sent templars to confirm the story, though they won't be back for another two days. Merrill is crying again, soundless and shaking; Isabela's face is white, her hand gripping Merrill's shoulder as much for her own support as the elf's; Varric is turned away, his shoulders bent in something Fenris cannot read.

His voice is rough as unsanded stone. "You believe him?"

Cullen lifts his eyes, the bruises of sleeplessness starker than they have been yet. "I don't know. My men—"

His hands clench. "You believe him."

"…Yes. I think I do."

Hawke's mabari gives a great shudder next to him, a wild creature made of grief; then he howls, head thrown back, the sound too loud in the close quarters of Meredith's office. Fenris's fingers still rest behind his ears; the sound trembles in his arm, as if made as much of the hollowing place inside him as the mabari's broken faith.

Cullen says something that he cannot hear. Merrill, too, her reddened eyes wide.

Fenris turns and walks from the Gallows.

—

He does not remember much of what happens after that. He knows he takes a skiff from the Gallows to the docks, half-blinded by the water's sunlit glare, knows that the streets are familiar and the faces familiar by look if not name. He does not speak to them.

His feet take him south. He is briefly in Darktown, only to see the lamp to the clinic unlit and shuttered, the bars across the doors broken but otherwise undisturbed. Then somehow he finds his way to Lowtown, to the little narrow stairway to Gamlen's home; he turns again without thinking, putting his back to the door and his sun-sharp shadow before him, and how many times had he met Hawke here that first year? Dozens, surely—it'd been the first real landmark of the city he'd known outside of Danarius's mansion, if only because Leandra had bothered to wash the doors and windows when no others did. Hawke had barrelled out once and nearly collided—

He shies from the thought. Something aches in his chest.

And then he is staring at the carved board of the Hanged Man without memory of arriving, the familiarity of the sight shocking through the numbness. Varric, he thinks blindly, Varric here if nothing else.

Corff greets him from behind the bar. He cannot bear to answer—and then as Corff has never done before he beckons, and points to a table in the far corner where the sunny afternoon can't quite reach, and there is something of an _anger_ in his eyes that sparks life in Fenris's own, if only for an instant. "Last table," he says shortly. "I've never been one to throw out a paying customer, but his tale's grown a hundred times every time he tells it, and he's told it a dozen times this last week. The Champion always paid on time, and I'll thank you, serah, to quit him slandering her name."

Fenris looks. It's a large table jammed in the corner, full every chair of rapt onlookers turned flowerlike to the dark-bearded, square-shouldered man in the farthest seat. Middle-aged or a little younger, he has the sun-browned skin of a regular traveler and the hard mouth of a trader—and reddened cheeks already, thanks to the three empty flagons upturned at his elbow, thanks to the fourth he lifts to his mouth for a deep swallow. He leans close to the woman next to him, whispering, and her laugh floats through the crowd to Fenris.

This man saw Hawke. This man might have been the last—

Fenris is close enough to hear his voice before he knows he has stepped forward. "And then I came over the hill," he says, a little slurred but still comprehensible, and gestures with his drink. "There was a light—"

"You _said_ this already. You went up to it and there was a woman."

"Right. And I went up, like this, hands out—and I called out hallo, and she looked up, and I said, d'you mind if I warm my hands at your fire?" He lifts a conspiratorial brow, dropping his voice. "Course, as I got closer I saw she was a pretty one, and by the time she waved me down I was thinking mayhap we'd warm something else up a bit later, eh."

The table laughs uproariously, helped on their way by their own drinks. Fenris cannot—breathe.

"So. We sat and ate, and we talked a bit—said she'd come from Kirkwall after the Chantry, you know, and was going east for some friends, and I was bound here for trade, and weren't it lucky we passed each other in the night?" He slams back another swallow, wipes his mouth. " _Then_ she started saying about how she hated traveling alone, and curse me if I didn't see my chance and take it. Said I couldn't swear by it but I'd heard I was fair enough company for a night—shut up, you lot!—and if she were _lonely_ , I'd be happy to oblige."

"And then?" the woman at his elbow asks, her mouth curved up, her eyebrow arched in polite disbelief. "You fucked the Champion of Kirkwall?"

The man chucks her chin, grinning. "Didn't know it was her, then, did I? So far as I knew it was a good smile and the sweetest arse you ever saw come perching on my knee."

"A good lay?"

"Yeah, but—there was only one name echoing 'round those hills, dearie, and it weren't hers."

"Liar," she says, but she's laughing.

"What next?" says the older man on his other side, ignoring his friend's elbow. "Then the wolves come, yeah?"

"Yes," says the man, and Fenris's gauntlet wraps solidly around his throat.

His listeners go silent as he drags the man across the table's surface, drinks spilling, the trader's bare hands scrabbling without gain against the rough wood. There is a pillar behind them, wide and square; Fenris pins the man to it, the beaten steel of his gauntlet driving up hard enough under his chin to turn the flesh white with the pressure. The man blinks tears at the ceiling, stretched to his toes, gasping desperately for air that comes too thin.

"What," says Fenris, "next?"

"Wolves," he chokes, gripping Fenris's arm, finding no yield. "Well—wild—wild dogs—"

Fenris waits. He is light-headed with rage and sorrow and the pinching agony of Hawke dying for this, for _this thing_ , this small lying man with no strength to him.

The trader's face has flushed, steady tears running from temple to throat. "Didn't—didn't lie with her. All else is—as I said to the captain. The Knight—the Knight-Captain. _Cullen!_ "

Fenris leans closer. Every line and curl of lyrium on his body is alight. "Tell _me_."

"Mage. She were, with fire—four of them. I got one. Two—she took two. The last one surprised her—over the edge—"

"You warned her?"

"N—no. Too _fast_ —"

"And the reward."

"Saw her face. Black—hair, tied low. Blue eyes. Had a broadsheet—she was—already _dead_! I swear!"

Fenris eases his grip. The man sinks down near two inches against the pillar, his dark hair stained with sweat, his eyes clenched shut, his mouth trembling as he gasps for air. The lyrium is already there, shrieking with unspent power, demanding vengeance in the name of a woman who would never take it for herself. It would have been easier to doubt had the man been righteous—but this is _Kirkwall_ , where truth has always been ugly and pathetic and small and _this_ , this is too easy to understand—

His fingers wrap around the trader's heart.

The next few moments stretch into each other like syrup, light smearing his vision to a blur. The man's mouth opens, a silent scream, his head knocking dully against the wooden pillar; one hand wraps around Fenris's wrist, as if a supplicant might sway a stone.

His lips work over and over and over, a single word without voice _._ His heart beats against Fenris's gauntleted fingers like a rabbit's.

He begins to squeeze—

" _Fenris!_ "

The voice is familiar enough to cut through the red haze. Not enough to stop him. He tenses a second time—

"Fenris," Aveline snaps again, and this time she is between him and his prey, her face twisted with anger and sorrow, her mailed hand on his chest. "Fenris. Listen to me. Let him go. Stop this, or I swear I'll pull the sword."

His voice is unfamiliar to his own ears, a low, violent, animal thing. "This man."

"I know."

"Hawke. He let—he _allowed_ her—"

"I _know_ ," Aveline says without loosening her grip. She dips her head until Fenris has no choice to meet her eyes. "But if you kill this unarmed man in broad daylight when I'm standing here, it'll be murder. It'll be _murder_ , Fenris, and I'll have to take you in."

"Hawke," he says again, desperately.

"Please." There are tears in her eyes. How long— "I would not lose you too."

He wrenches away with a shout. The entire tavern is silent, all eyes fixed to him and to the man kneeling at his feet, sobbing for air, both hands locked against his heart. More guards are there, faces he knows and ignores. Donnic steps close enough to touch him, but Fenris acknowledges neither his presence nor the aborted gesture; instead he watches as they lift the trader to his feet, half-carrying him between their shoulders as Aveline directs them to the prison for questioning. Something is going thin and lifeless inside him, a quick withering of a last breath, an emptiness left behind as numb and aching as ice.

For this. She died—for _this._

_Of course I did, you silly fool. Who else would have?_

Fenris sucks in a breath, then turns on his heel and stumbles for the door, shying away from Aveline's outstretched hand. The sun is blinding enough to sting his eyes with tears; by the time he can see again he is in Hightown, halfway through the familiar square, the stark red wings of the Amell crest not fifteen steps away.

He startles back, turns again—and then he is running, hard as he can, as if that alone might carry him out of this nightmare, as if there is only distance between him and the total devastation snapping at his heels. Habit carries him to Danarius's mansion; he throws himself into the familiar, untouched gloom, heaving for breath, staring at the shadows of a life and memory as far from him now as Hawke, lost without recourse to some sea-tide on a nameless worthless rock. He cannot bear this—he is tearing apart, split at every line of lyrium like tearing seams, drowning fast and deep with no light and no strength to search for it.

He buries his face in one hand, reaches blindly for support and finds none. Then he is on his knees and his forehead is against the cool, dusty floor, and there is a cry deep in his chest that has tangled there, trapped and stretched too tight and choking him from the inside out, anguish and unflinching despair knotted up into something steel and burning that will never ease.

He shouts into the stone. It does not answer; he shouts again without words, his hands fisted above his head.

Then the tears come, sparse drips in the dust. _I waited for you. Hawke, I waited—_

_Gladly, at your side._

_I can't bear the thought of living—_

Hawke is dead.

Hawke is dead, and he is not.

Eventually, when the daylight dims and the stars begin to rise, when his throat is torn raw and his useless armor torn away, dropped behind him like so many dry leaves in the dust, Fenris sleeps. He does not dream.


	5. Chapter 5

Some Days retired from the rest  
In soft distinction lie,  
The Day that a companion came—  
Or was obliged to die.  
— _Emily Dickinson_

* * *

Hawke had asked him, once, what he wanted done with his body after he died. He hadn't known how to answer; pyre seemed the obvious choice, though he hadn't been sure the lyrium would burn with him.

"That'd be a sight," Hawke had said, laughing. "A little puddle of lyrium worth a fortune in the middle of a bier. Whoever found it'd be set for life."

"What do you mean?" Fenris had asked, shaking his head. "It would be yours."

"Idiot," she'd said. "Whatever makes you think I'll let you die first?"

—

Fenris wakes to the dying echo of the ninth bell. He is on the floor beside the bed, not entirely certain how he's managed to arrive there—but the morning does not give him the luxury of forgetting, even for a moment, what the previous day has brought him. He fists a hand in the bedclothes, undisturbed since the last night he spent here before the Gallows burned, and drags them from the bed to his shoulders.

Then he turns away from the watery sunlight filtering through his age-rippled windows, shutting out the world, and does not open his eyes again.

—

The next time he awakens, it's nearly mid-afternoon. So long has he had the habit of waking early there is little chance of forcing himself to sleep a second time; instead he goes to the wine cellar and takes three bottles from their shelves without looking at their labels, and carries them up again, and drinks until he remembers nothing else.

—

Donnic comes. Fenris cannot remember if he had locked the door or if his friend has had to break it down; it hardly matters, though, as the first realization that he is not alone comes with the hand dropping gently to his shoulder. Neither is he certain of the day, although that he is no longer drunk and no longer trying to become so points to more passing than he'd realized. Three bottles empty by the bed, the fourth half-so at his feet—he himself on the floor, leant carelessly against the wooden bench before his bedroom's unlit hearth.

The bench creaks as Donnic sits, facing the other way, and Fenris presses his forehead against his bent knee, eyes closed, unwilling to bare to him this total weakness, unwilling to send him away when to be alone cuts so sharp. _I am—_

_I am alone._

_I'm here, Fenris._

They sit in silence for nearly an hour.

At the end of it Donnic stands and Fenris goes with him to the washroom, and when he has scrubbed the stink of stale wine from his skin Donnic walks to his home and Fenris follows. They eat together with Aveline, who is grey and silent with grief herself and does not ask him to speak—he is grateful for that—and when they are finished Fenris leaves.

He means to go home. He does.

And yet it is to Hawke's estate that he finds himself wandering, the familiar ivy grown wilder beside her door, the blood-red crest of the Amells softened by spring shadow. He lifts his hand, hesitates, looks away, lifts it again. Why is he here? _I can't bear the thought—_

Orana opens the door at the first knock, as if she has been waiting for him to gather his strength. Her eyes are swollen and dim, her face pale; Hawke's mabari presses close behind her, his ears back against his head, his stumped tail wagging slowly as Fenris meets his eyes. They draw him into the coolness of the house without once touching him; Orana says, too sudden in the silence, "Messere Varric brought me a copy of the will this morning. He was very kind, but I'm—I'm glad you came, messere."

His voice is so rough. "I had… to see."

She dips her head. "Of course." The dog bumps against her hip, noses her hand; she gives him a small smile. "You go, then."

Fenris touches Toby's head as he trots forward, close enough that he can feel the dog's heat against his legs, and Orana trails behind them as he walks without thought to the stairs, across the carpeted landing to Hawke's empty, silent bedroom. The door stands open; he stops just beyond it, unwilling to move further, and Orana stops at his shoulder.

"She went back for you." Not an accusation, not as he means it, but something thorned lies in the words.

Orana makes a soft, wounded sound, and when he looks she will not meet his eyes. "She… found me," she says, her hands twisting at her waist. She is so _young_. "There were people outside, shouting for the Champion. Bodahn and Sandal had left already—I meant to wait—and then I could not…"

"She sent them away."

"Yes. Yes. And then she took some things from her room and put them in a bag and she said to me, _we have to go_. I did not want to leave. I did not…" She presses her fist against her mouth, eyes pinched shut against the memory. "I did not want the mistress to leave, either."

He knows. Orana swallows hard, twice, and continues less steadily but no less strong, "We ran down into the city. She wanted to go to the docks, to reach the ship and—and you, messere. We made it as far as Lowtown before they began closing the gates to the hexes. We couldn't go any farther in the streets, and there were— _mobs,_ with swords and torches and bows. I was—I was afraid."

"She would not have fought with you there."

She shakes her head. "We went the only place that was still open: the alienage. The mistress said I would be safer there if someone came looking for me, because I had served in her house for so long; she took me to her friend—to serah Merrill's house, I mean, and she told Toby to stay with us to keep us safe, and then she said—she—"

Her voice grows tight, then breaks off into nothing. Fenris looks in time to see the first tear slide down her cheek; then she buries her face in both hands and turns away, her shoulders bent and trembling. The dog moves to her feet, lies down there so that his heavy head rests atop her feet, and Fenris—

He has nothing left to comfort her.

Eventually he masters himself enough to step forward, to grip her shoulder in silence until her tears slow, until she can smooth away the grief with her hands and command her own voice again. "She said that she would see us again."

Fenris nods. Of course she did.

Of course, in all their years of alliance and friendship and more than that, this would be the only promise for her to break.

—

The next day, he goes to Merrill's home and delivers Carver's letter. He does not stay overlong; Isabela is with her and they both wish him to make conversation, as if he could put words to this total ruin of all his hopes. Merrill is little more than a dimmed reflection of herself, a slender tree stripped of its smooth bark, unsmiling even when she thanks him politely for his delivery. Isabela gives him a grin that does not reach her eyes, her knuckles freshly split from, he supposes, the same torment that drives him from his bed night after night after night. He does not comment, and she does not hide them, and when she has forced him to swear that he will not leave the city without warning he goes again.

He sleeps when he grows weary; he eats when he remembers, not because he wishes to eat but because Hawke would have hounded him until he did, and this day gives way to that day and the day after. Varric sends him one invitation to Wicked Grace which he does not answer, and a runner after that which he ignores; Aveline tells him of a beautifully-penned eulogy that Fenris does not read.

An odd thing that he, who has torn out so many hearts, should live so well without one.

It is not that he wishes to die. It is more that—he has no wish to _live_ , and something tender and bleeding is knotted into that, that the life of one person could weigh so heavily against everything he has fought to keep for ten years, that the freedom he has fought for and bled for—that he denied Hawke for—should have so little taste now without her here to share it. How much time has he wasted? How much, now that there is nothing else—

He thinks of that for a long time, on an evening when he has found himself at the docks with Toby, the sun's last edge barely visible over the water, stars already rising in the purple haze above the city. He is not certain how long he has been sitting here—hours, maybe, watching ships dock and sail again, crates unloaded and reloaded, sailors' shouts carrying through the dockside streets like the wind knows them. Candlelight flickers and glows in windows as the sun drops below the horizon; curtains draw closed; doors open to welcome home their loved ones from their work.

He cannot live like this.

Hawke would say it is not a life—and she would be right, he thinks. Every glance from his friends is shielded by pity; every street in Kirkwall is shadowed by her voice, by the memory of her voice. She would have laughed to see him so lost. Perhaps she would have struck him. Perhaps he deserves—

It is not a _life!_ He'd had a choice, once, one he fled from for three years—she'd offered him a gift he could have never accepted, not as he was, and for so long he'd been _afraid_ beyond measure, willing to live half an existence while his master yet drew breath. By the time he'd mastered himself enough to take what she'd offered he'd been certain that she would have tired of waiting, tired of _him_ —and yet to exist with his heart in two places had been unendurable for another month, another week, another hour. He'd chosen to believe there was a chance, even one made so slim by three years' passing.

But she'd caught her breath, and she'd smiled—

He'd made a _choice_. He'd chosen Hawke, chosen to bind himself of his own will to another soul with chains stronger than any iron and steel Danarius might have made. _Freedom_ , he thinks, and a cage he would not have left willingly while he lived.

His fingers close convulsively around his wrist, where the red band still ties.

It would be easier if he regretted it.

Salt sprays across his face with a breaking wave, and a flock of grey seabirds lifts from the water with a clear, strange cry. Toby lifts his head, ears perked forward, watching them wheel great circles in the twilight sky; then he looks up at Fenris and cocks his head, and for the first time since his heart died Fenris draws in a clean breath. He strokes the dog's ears, smoothes a hand over his ruff where the collar rests, and stands.

_I can't bear the thought of living without you_.

He cannot stay in Kirkwall any longer.

—

Once, during card night at the Hanged Man, Sebastian had asked Fenris where he planned to settle now that Danarius was dead. He'd been surprised by the question, discomfited by the spotlight; Isabela had propped her chin on her hands and Anders had lifted his eyebrows, and for a moment he'd busied himself with his cards as best he could. The answer was easy enough— _gladly, at your side—_ but the expression of it surprisingly difficult, the idea too new and fragile yet for public scrutiny.

"Well?" Hawke had said, her pursed lips not enough to hide her smile, and beneath the table her booted foot had slid along the inside of his ankle.

He'd scowled at her challenge, because it _had_ been a challenge, and when her mouth had only quirked in answer he'd tossed his hand to the table and folded his arms, his voice dropping, his eyes lifting to her own.

"I enjoy following you," he'd said, a challenge of his own, and her cheeks had colored so swiftly Isabela had reached across the table to inspect Hawke's drink.

"Good answer," she'd managed eventually, and Sebastian had laughed, but it was the memory of her fingers sliding through his beneath the table that had stayed clearest in his mind since.

—

Twenty-five days after the Gallows, Fenris stands on the pier before Isabela's ship, a bag over one shoulder and his sword over the other, Toby panting at his side. He had seen Hawke for the last time, here; for a moment his memory claims victory, the bright morning skies supplanted by a smokier evening, by Hawke standing tall and proud and smiling, a promise on her lips as dead as all his hopes. He passes a hand over his eyes—and the image is gone and, shuddering, Fenris boards the ship. Toby comes with him, his nails clicking on the wood of the gangplank, and when they reach the ship proper Fenris blows out a breath, resting one hand on the rail.

Varric waves from the pier, his face still drawn with sorrow; Orana drops a curtsey, tears in her eyes; Merrill grips her staff with both hands, smiling, her short hair tossed by the sea breezes carried in from the south. Fenris cannot imagine that this may be the last time that he will see these faces. And yet—neither can he imagine returning to Kirkwall, not like this, not with the city so stained with his own grief. The future—

He flinches from the thought. To be still so raw—he cannot bear the idea of it, stretching out so long and lonely where it had not been before. Not yet.

Instead he lifts a hand, inclines his head, and turns away. It is only when he drops his bag to his small bunk below that he realizes it was the hand still bearing the mark of Hawke's favor.

—

For all that they sail the same route, there is nothing of the same urgency to mark this voyage. Isabela sets them a leisurely pace eastward, the crew as eager as Fenris to be away from Kirkwall again, and for the next several days there is as much of peace as Fenris can expect. The news at Ostwick and at Hercinia is the same as he expects: he hears once of a lost shipment of Orlesian spices, and once of slavers in Markham, and under all of it is the fallen Champion and the cities that will fall with her.

Her name hurts every time.

On the fourth day, he asks Thalia where they sail. "You don't know?" she says, surprised, and rocks steadily with the weight of the ship's wheel against a wave. Her black, braided hair is bound at the nape of her neck today; Fenris's own has grown long, he realizes, and turns his face into the wind.

"No."

"Rivain. Or a port near it, anyway. The captain has heard of a man making maps of the southern waters there."

Rivain. As good a country as any, if he decides against the south. As if it matters. Perhaps he will stay on and join the crew, if Isabela will have him. If nothing else it will be purpose.

They dock in Wycome on the fifth day, and Isabela releases the crew for an evening's leave. Fenris watches the last of them disappear into the warmth of the late spring night, arms over each other's shoulders, laughing at the promise of drink and company; in the distance bars and brothels alike ring out with cheerful conversations, yellow torchlight spilling from every door and window like beacons. Toby sits at his feet by the rail, tongue lolling, patient as the sea.

"Well?" says Isabela behind him, and Fenris turns to see her silhouetted in shadow against the steady creaking of her ship, made little more than the warm flash of gold at her throat, at her wrists, beneath the curve of her mouth. "Care to join them?"

He shakes his head. She sighs, comes close enough that he can smell salt and honey, and ghosts her lips across his cheek. "Take your time," she says, her voice low, and then she ruffles Toby's ears. "Keep an eye on him, pet, will you?"

The dog barks, one ear flopping forward, and shoves his nose into Fenris's hand. Isabela laughs, and then her eyes drop to the red cloth wound around his wrist and for an instant behind her smile there is a terrible, twisted grief—but she turns away before he can follow it, and by the time she glances back at the end of the gangplank her face is composed again. "We sail at dawn," she calls, and throws him a careless salute. "I'll see you then, sweet thing."

"Yes," he says, and does not watch her go.

He stands at the rail for a long time. Toby waits with him, dozing lightly, head on his foot or by it, while the crowds on the pier ebb and swell and ebb again. Eventually he stirs and the dog rises; and because he can—because he cannot _stay—_ he sets off into the night.

It is not terribly late, still hours yet to midnight, enough life to the streets that he feels no threat. Not that he could fight, not really, not as he is now—but he shoves that thought away, slave's habits rising to force his mind to clear again, to think only of this step and this step and the step after. It is good to be moving, if nothing else. To feel stone beneath his bare feet that has no memory of Hawke.

"Serah!"

Varric was to write to Carver. He does not know if the dwarf has done so yet—he hopes not, selfishly, if only so that Carver may have another day with his sister yet living.

"Ser elf! _Serah!_ "

If she lives for him, then she is not yet—

"Ser! I, ah—Fenris!"

The sound of his name snaps him from his thoughts like a breaking branch. He looks back, startled, Toby's head cocked curiously—and it is the Gull's Nest he stands before, its faded green sign swinging in the wind, the street stretched out behind him so familiar now he has walked it without thought. And standing in the doorway of the Nest: the elf proprietor, his spectacles askew on his nose, his greying hair pulled hurriedly out of his face. Relief flashes through his eyes at the recognition; Fenris hesitates, unwilling to force conversation with a man who had known him when he hoped, but there is little escaping now and he goes reluctantly to the Nest's stoop, lit better by the strings of little lanterns draped here and there between the roofs.

"You have been well?" he says, because that is the thing to say, but the innkeeper waves the words away impatiently.

"Serah," he says, his voice jumping with excitement. "You have a letter. It came at last."

"What?"

"A _letter_ ," he says again, and pulls the envelope from his belt, and all at once Fenris's heart slams a great jolting blow against his ribs, all the world fading into nothing but what the innkeeper holds because it is _his_ name on the envelope in clear, narrow letters, and the handwriting—the handwriting—

—is _Hawke's._

—

He'd asked her why, once. They'd been in her bed, the room dark—he'd woken her with a nightmare and she'd been curled against him, her nose tucked beneath his ear, both waiting for sleep to come again.

"Why not?" she'd asked, smiling, drowsy, and he hadn't found the words to answer, hardly knowing the reason himself; she'd sighed and shifted until her mouth pressed against his neck, and she'd murmured, "Because. A hundred reasons. Because you laugh at my jokes."

He'd snorted, inexplicably tense; she'd smiled into his skin. "Because you're intelligent, and you care about improving yourself. Because your mind," and she'd pressed a teasing finger against his temple, "hones mine. You make me think about things in ways I've never considered. You've got convictions, and—even though I don't always agree with them, you've made me stronger in my own beliefs, too." Then, more seriously, "Because you came, after Mother, in spite of everything that had happened between us, and in spite of the fact that I think you felt just as lost as I did."

He'd turned at that, found her eyes in the dark. She'd traced his lip with her thumb, thoughtful and quiet, then kissed the corner of his mouth. "Because you've got a good heart, even though you refuse to allow it half the time. Because your unshakeable loyalty is something I want to be worthy of."

"Hawke," he'd said.

She'd kissed him again, a real one this time, her fingers on his cheek and her shoulders curving towards him. "Because you believe I deserve someone better, when you're one of the best men I've ever known." Then she'd laughed, softly, and said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world, "Because I love you."

—

_Fenris—_

_I'm sorry, but I've had an unexpected delay. I've only got a moment to get this letter to you, or I'd explain everything, but listen—I'm going to be late. I'm not sure by how much. I'm just outside Ostwick and there's this rumor about—never mind. It's too long. I'll tell you everything when I see you again._

_The point is, I've got to go north for a few days. Maybe a week, two at the most. I'm not sure how far, but afterwards I'm going to follow the road from Markham to Wycome, not the coastal roads as Isabela expects. I'll try to find you at the Gull's Nest, but if you get this before I show up (v. likely), go to the Silver Lion. It's a little inn just outside Southfort, about half a day from Markham. I'll give you the whole sordid story when I come to meet you there._

_Fenris. I just—flames! I wish I could tell you how sorry I am for leaving you the way I did. I can't stop thinking about you on that pier, looking like I'd just handed you your own heart and told you to eat it. Not that you could tell much of what was going on through that concussion, anyway—and if Carver tells me you've been straining that stomach wound I'll finish you off myself, I swear it._

_I miss you. I love you. I love, I love, I love you, Fenris._

_Hm. Too much, maybe, but it's been a while since I've said it, and I thought you ought to know it's still true. Give whatever of it you don't want to everyone else._

_I'll see you soon._

_Hawke_

_—_

His hands are shaking before he finishes the letter. Delivered by courier two days after they'd left Wycome, the innkeeper tells him, sympathy and concern in his face; he'd wanted to forward it and hadn't known the address. Dated from Ostwick, six days after they'd been separated—Fenris tries to think, can barely string two thoughts together before they flicker winglike from his grasp again. He'd been here by then. He'd been here, and Hawke had been just outside Ostwick—slower than they'd expected, but not so slow for fear.

She'd seen something in Ostwick. Something that distracted her enough to take her off her path, to leave him waiting without word.

They'd waited in Wycome near two weeks. The letter ought to have come—

The _postmark_ , he realizes, and Fenris flips the forgotten envelope to see it marked late Cloudreach, near seventeen days after the battle at the Gallows. Seventeen days, but the letter itself dated only six—something had stopped her sending it at first, but somehow she had managed to post it in the end and he doesn't know—

Southfort.

Useless to pretend he will not go. Toby licks his hand, a faint whine at the back of his throat; the innkeeper pulls his spectacles from his nose and looks Fenris in the eye. "You'll find her," he says, as if he knows. "Man who searches like this can't help but find what he's looking for."

Something has trapped his voice, paper-thin and lodged tight enough to choke him. He swallows twice and still cannot speak; in the end he only drops his head in a mark of gratitude impossible to convey. Then he begins to retrace his steps to the docks as quickly as he can, Toby bounding at his side, a pale tender tightness behind his ribs that cannot be anything but hope.

—

He is off within the hour. He goes to the ship only long enough to find a map—and finds Thalia there instead, content to make her quiet revelries alone. There are fewer detailed maps of land than sea on the _Call_ , but she finds one stashed in a low cupboard, unrolls it, traces the roads for Fenris until they find Southfort tucked into the hills just east of Markham. Even better, it lies along the road from Wycome, and before Thalia has finished speaking he is halfway to his room to collect his sword and cloak.

"It won't be safe alone," Thalia tells him, trailing behind, a too-tall shadow with no hand lifted to bar his way.

As if he has never run alone before. He takes up cloak and sword in one motion, turning again to the hall without hesitating. "I will not wait. The dog will come with me."

Toby barks; Thalia gives a faint smile. "Have you coin?"

"Enough."

"A message for the captain, then."

Fenris pauses at the door to the main deck. His cloak is heavy on his shoulders, the sword a heavier weight atop it; then he briskly fastens its clasp and pushes the door open. "Tell her," he starts. The sea beats against the hull, relentless, driving him like the tide.

"Yes?"

"Tell her where I go. Tell her I know the _Call's_ route; if I must I will look for her in Rivain."

"And if you miss us there?"

_Kirkwall_ , he nearly says, but there is no truth to it; he looks instead to the night-dark sky, stars blotted out by torchlight, and thinks of a different flight south, ten years ago, when he knew the thing he fled and had no goal but _away_. He says, "I will leave notice with Varric."

Thalia nods, stepping back at the gangplank to allow him passage. Toby trots gingerly down its slatted slope and Fenris follows after; when he reaches the dock he looks up to where Thalia's broad shape nearly vanishes into the darkness, and he adds, "Tell her I kept my word."

"I will," she says, and her smile flashes white in the dark. "Good luck, serah."

Fenris turns west.

—

It takes three days of hard traveling to reach Southfort. The weather stays fair enough, for which he is grateful, and the road is sufficiently well-traveled to keep bandits at bay, but like seeds on the wind the exploits of the Champion must have spread farther than even Varric could have hoped and Fenris is recognized twice by passing traders. It is faint luck they are neither templars nor Seekers, considering, but after the second trader has been sufficiently discouraged from his questions Fenris pulls the hood of his cloak over his hair and moves to the side of the road as far from prying eyes as possible. To be stopped _now—_ he will not allow it.

He resents even his own need for sleep, but near noon of the first day the dog gives him a reproving look, his tongue lolling with fatigue, and Fenris permits them both near three hours' rest in a small tree-lined copse high off the path. The hills have begun to rise closer to the southern edge of the roads, excellent protection from the winds without an inn for shelter, and after a brief meal scrounged from the dried meats of Thalia's last offering they are on the road again. When even that is gone Fenris barters from what the merchants and traders who have stopped can offer; when the nights come dark enough that even Toby cannot keep his feet they sleep bare and restless in the hills.

On the morning of the third day they find a tributary of the Minanter, clear and sweet enough for them both to bathe away the grit and sweat of travel; when they are finished Fenris moves them forward again, sword thumping solidly against his back, the dog loping at his side.

It is good Toby came. Else, with no one to force him to rest, to eat…

They reach Southfort at sunset of the third day. It is minor enough, a handful of outlying farmhouses surrounding a small, bustling town proper, a scatter of neat streets stretching across the trade road to coax the traveling merchants to the stables and the smithy and the markets. Two inns, says the townswoman he asks, the Tabard near the south end of town, and a few streets over—the Silver Lion.

The building stands tall and narrow, three floors, white-painted and well-kept. The proprietor much resembles her establishment, an older woman with a formidable air; she frowns severely at Toby when he enters, but Fenris's coinpurse atop her counter stops her complaints before they begin. He tells her, his hands fisted at his sides to stop their shaking: a woman, tall, dark hair, alone. The proprietor shakes her head, a flash of pity in her eyes behind the sternness.

Hawke is not here—

He thinks, sharp enough to startle himself, _yet._

"A room," he says at last, Toby's weight against his leg, and takes the key she offers him. He lets out a breath, ruthlessly silencing the whisper of despair needling into his mind. Thirty-three days since a burning dock tore him from the life he'd hoped, since the Gallows split the world, since Hawke lifted her hand with earth and sea between them and told him, who would have gone gladly to death with her, to go his way alone.

This might still kill him. To wait for each moment as long as he can bear it, to cling to this slightest chance that Hawke might still live, might still somehow find her way at last to this tiny, unimportant place where no one will look for her but him, and yet find _nothing_ but another breaking hope—he will lose his mind. He knows it, as easily as he knows his name.

But.

But for now, in this place, where even through this grief there lives some high clear star of deathless hope—

Fenris will wait.


	6. Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus begins part two. Recommended listening: Peter Vronsky's [Reprise](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFFrScRdsFY) from the Never Let Me Go OST.

Part Two

—

And a woman I used to know  
Who loved one man from her youth,  
Against the strength of the fates  
Fighting in somber pride,  
Never spoke of this thing,  
But hearing his name by chance,  
A light would pass over her face.  
— _Those Who Love_ , Sara Teasdale

—

The world ends.

After that comes chaos, and fire, and a look of such betrayal on Fenris's face that Hawke nearly cedes her whole purpose to ease him of it. If Orana were not—but she _is_ , and Hawke will not let her come to harm when she can still offer some sort of protection, so despite the glare Fenris gives her even through the daze of his concussion, she kisses him hard enough they'll both remember and steps back to solid ground.

Carver will protect him. Carver, idiot oaf, tall as a tree and stretching Fenris's stomach wound even with stooped shoulders. She meets his eyes, blue as the Warden's uniform he wears—just long enough for promise to pass between them—and then he eases Fenris to the safety of Isabela's ship, ignoring the way the white head swivels with every step to find Hawke on the docks again.

So much blood beneath the hand pressed to his stomach. Blood in his hair, too, and in dark stripes down his neck and again she falters because he is hurt, he is _hurt_ and she is hurting him more with leaving and he will not understand, not at first—

Enough! She cannot wait. "And Isabela," she calls, finding the glint of a hard smile through the smoke-thick winds. Isabela knows: Wycome, and a different sort of oath, and then Toby stands proudly beside her and Isabela's first mate draws up the gangplank and there is no turning back, not now, not any longer. Fenris watches her without moving, Carver's hand around his arm, his own silver gauntlet clutched to his stomach, every line of his body tense as iron as she straightens, as she leaves him behind against his will.

"Don't _worry_!" Hawke says, laughing, and grips her staff tighter to hide its tremble. "I'm coming back!"

Fenris's eyes, burning green in the dark, a thousand things unsaid between them—

Hawke turns and runs.

—

Despite the upheaval in the streets she moves fast and quiet, avoiding the mobs when she can, cutting through narrow back alleys and unused lanes in Lowtown until she reaches the stairs to the upper district. The dog stays close on her heels, her urgency bleeding into him; only once does she look back at the top of the stairway, where she can see the bay and the Gallows burning beyond it against the night, faint fires still flickering in the upper levels where the templars have not reached. Meredith, ash—the Circle routed—Cullen barely persuaded to allow her friends their freedom, and even that as easily changed with a single word.

_There can be no peace!_

Hawke stumbles, swears aloud, slams a mailed fist against the shadow-dim Hightown wall. Damn Anders. _Damn_ him, and damn Meredith, and damn _her_ for her own blindness. "Ask one simple question," she mutters, easing into the markets, adjusting her grip on her staff. "Aren't these explosives, Anders? Why do I need to talk to the Grand Cleric, Anders? How's the voice in your head doing, Anders? Would anyone mind secretly following Anders around for a few minutes just in case he decides to do something stupid to the Chantry—"

Toby lets out a low, sudden growl, and Hawke throws herself to her knees behind a fire-scorched market stall. Running footsteps—then six or seven thugs with torches and naked blades hurry across the square for the stairs to Lowtown. The moment the last torchlight dies away from the wall she is moving again, up the far stairs and into the dimmer path that will take her—

"Come out, Champion!"

"Coward! You've ruined us all!"

Hawke drags in a breath, shoving her hair from her eyes. Not too many, not yet—only five or six clustered at her front door across the square, but two with torches and one with a long kitchen knife. She doesn't recognize their faces, but that means little now; then one of them throws a rock, and the sound of breaking glass is enough to send her striding forward. "Can I help you?" she calls, her voice sharp through the low sputtering of flame.

For all their bravado they cow quickly enough before the Champion, sparks spraying from the place where she grips her staff, enough grief and anger in her voice that Toby snarls again. The leader whirls to her, says, shaking, "You did this—" then, in yielding, "Champion, you allowed this to happen!"

"I did," she says, and thinks again of Anders—and sorrow strikes her like a blow, rocking her back on her feet. She hadn't seen it. Hadn't understood, not like she'd thought, and in the end she'd struck him across the face and shouted for him to get out of her sight, as lost to rage as if a demon had whispered at her back. She hadn't understood—she hadn't—

She swallows, lifts her chin. "I did. And I've just spent the last four hours trying to—" To, what? To kill a madwoman with a lyrium sword, to keep a Circle of frightened mages from burning the rest of the city to the ground, to keep their templars from a slaughter born of fear. "To restore what order I can. Templars and the Guard will be in these streets in minutes. I suggest you're not here when they arrive."

The leader swells. "Is that a threat?"

"No," Hawke says, abruptly weary beyond measure. She steps forward and they flinch, the one lifting her knife in open fear, but by the time she reaches them her staff has become a walking aid in truth, Hawke leaning hard enough on it that her knuckles have gone white. "No," she says again, and looks from one to the other. "It's a request. From one citizen of Kirkwall to another, because this city's been my home for ten years now and there's been enough death in the last few hours to fill a field of pyres."

"The Chantry…"

"Is gone. And the Circle is in revolt. The Divine will have templars here in a matter of days, if they're not on their way already, and anyone with even the remotest connection to me or my friends will be questioned." She leans her temple against her staff, sighing. "Including odd meetings at my home on the night the Chantry fell."

They flinch again, lingering anger giving way to unease. Hawke steps through them, puts one hand on her door, caught for an instant between the total strangeness of the familiar sight and the bloody trail she's left in her wake; then she says without turning, "I'm asking you one last time. Please, for the sake of your families: go _home_."

She does not wait for their answer. Her hand twists on the latch and then she is inside, home herself, and Orana is there in the foyer with her hands over her mouth and her cheeks white, and almost the instant Hawke has locked the door behind her Orana is in her arms, trembling like a tree in high winter, the trade tongue and Tevinter alike spilling in a jumble between them. "I'm sorry," Hawke says, over and over, until it is not only for Orana but for Elthina and for Anders and Sebastian and even for Meredith, because no night should have ever ended as this one has, no life stripped away so harshly, no splintering of friendship without a word of understanding.

She cannot make sense of it. It is all so _close_ —she can only place regret, and there is no time for anything more.

But three years of living in the Champion's home has made Orana ready for some things, and in a matter of moments she is off to collect supplies and what few mementos she can carry. Hawke does the same; there is an empty, well-oiled rucksack by the door, and a pouch with emergency funds in the vase beside it, and after a brief stop in the study for the Book of Shartan and her mother's letters she moves to the kitchens. Enough food for three days, maybe four if she's careful—and a waterskin, hastily filled at the back pump, and then Hawke hurries to the door.

Orana is already there, her own bag over her shoulder and a small covered basket on one arm, her shawl pulled tightly over her chest. Her cheeks are still white, but she meets Hawke's eyes without fear. "I'm ready, Mistress."

A sudden rush of gratitude swells in Hawke's chest sudden enough to steal her breath. When she can speak again, she says, "We're coming back here, Orana. You and I, we're coming back. I _promise_."

Orana smiles. She says, "I know."

—

The crowd is gone from her door by the time they emerge into the night. The air still reeks of smoke strongly enough that Orana coughs and pulls a corner of the shawl over her mouth; Toby stays close, watchful and silent, as Hawke leads them carefully through the streets. "The docks, if we can," she whispers to Orana in the narrow alley leading to the Lowtown stairs, both of them pressed flat against the dingy, ash-stained wall as three armored templars hurry past. "Isabela's ship's waiting there to get us out of the city. Until it calms again, anyway."

"And messere Fenris?"

"He's with her. He—" she touches her head without looking as they move again, hurrying down the stairs and into the lower city, and Orana makes a soft sound of understanding. "Clear. Let's move."

But they are only halfway through Lowtown when Orana grips her arm, pointing to their right. "Mistress—the gates!"

No. The enormous gates to the hexes, meant to quell any insurrection of the slaves— _closing_ , one by one, rusted-iron hinges shrieking over the crackling of distant flames, scraping over stone where age has worn them crooked in their frames. Hawke glances over her shoulder—the way already shut behind them, and she hadn't even _noticed_ , and if they're trapped here Orana will—

A shout. "You there! Stop!"

"Run," Hawke breathes, and they do.

Never before has she been so grateful for Gamlen's dubious aid. Three years' knowledge of Lowtown's workings thanks to him, of dodging templars and gangs alike, of fetching her uncle from another disreputable institution when he had been too drunk to walk himself, and in a matter of minutes they have lost themselves in the narrow, crooked alleys of the eastern districts. Lost their pursuers, anyway, though she still isn't sure if they were guard or templar or thug—but their uniform makes little difference in this chaos, and regardless of the threat she must get Orana off the streets.

"Can you bear the alienage?" Hawke asks, glancing around a corner long enough to clear it, and turns back in time to see Orana nod in resolution.

"I've never—but if you think I should, I will."

"Merrill will be there." Her mind races. "It's only for a few days—just until the city quiets, until you'll be safe in the estate alone. If you can—if you're willing—I know it'll be difficult but here you'd be one more elf among many, and if they're closing the hexes I don't think I can—"

"Mistress," Orana says, her hand closing gently around Hawke's forearm. "I will go."

"Orana." Another regret, like a knife in her heart. "I'm _sorry_."

Orana shakes her head, smiling, and moves her grip to Hawke's hand, adds her other hand as well. "I am not. I chose to stay. I would stay with you now if I could. But I know messere Fenris is waiting, and…I think he will need you more than I."

Tears prick at the back of her eyes, but this is neither the time nor the place, and when the way is clear Hawke leads them to the mouth of the alienage. The gates are still open here, though more than one suspicious face peers at them from shuttered windows, and they hurry to Merrill's home without stopping. Another precious handful of minutes to explain, to embrace Merrill one last time—

Then she kneels in the shadow of the vhenadahl, takes Toby's face in both hands. "You know what I'm going to say."

He whines, licks her chin.

"Merrill can't be on her guard all the time. I've got to know that there's someone else here to keep them both safe. Someone I can trust."

Toby whines again, a high thready thing that cuts at her, and Hawke leans forward until her face is buried in his neck, until she can hide the unsteady gasps in his thick, coarse fur. "We've been through it all, haven't we?" she asks him, her fingers twisted into his collar, her eyes hot and tight. "From the very beginning."

She swallows and presses a kiss to his neck, then to the side of his greying, whiskered muzzle. "Do this last thing for me, pup. Keep them safe."

He licks her chin again, and then when she stands he stands with her, and moves to Merrill's side in her doorway, and sits at her feet. No betrayal in his eyes, only something fierce and true—and how _many_ will she leave behind tonight? How many times must she order someone she loves to stay back, or watch someone she had considered a friend turn away from her in total anger—

Anders, she thinks, swallowed in grief. Anders, and Sebastian, and Fenris, and now even her dog—

"I'll see you again!" she shouts, gripping her staff, lifting it in salute.

She _will_ come back.

—

Gamlen's door is shut and barred, and no one answers her shout. Hawke blows out a breath and shoves a quick, scribbled noted beneath his door. "You always did like reading my mail!" she calls through it, not waiting for an answer, and spends a precious moment to pray he has made it out of the city as well. From there it is only steps to the long, narrow stairway leading down into the night's shadows, into the docks, her staff tapping on every third stone stair like a call. _Gamlen, fool uncle. You'd better hope Charade's willing to take care of you—_

The scalding sound of ancient metal shrills through salt-sea air as she reaches the end of the stairway, and Hawke's heart leaps to her throat. No source that she can see—but there's a ladder to her left as she emerges from the archway, leant against an old, crumbling building, and she clambers up it one-handed, still gripping her staff, ignoring the sway and creak of the hand-tied joists. She still can't quite see from here, but Hawke has run roofs before and homes are built tightly in Kirkwall, and soon enough she makes her way to the end of a lane with one taller shop built to cap it. She takes its sloped wall at speed, the pointed toes of her boots digging into the grey, gritty mortar, her hand outstretched for the careless tiles tumbling down its gable—and then she is up, hair flying, caught in the smoky winds carried to her by the sea.

The Gallows still burns. Quieter now than it did, though fires still flicker orange here and there to break the blackness of the night; the bay itself is dark and still, no storm to churn it save what they have made themselves, save the dozen yellow-bobbing lamps that mark the skiffs making their curious way to the wargrounds.

Hawke blinks, her eyes tearing from a breeze with heavier smoke. Two of the ships in the harbor nearest her are glowing, smoldering wrecks, sailors and civilians alike swarming its sides with buckets of seawater, and in the distance—at the mouth of the bay—

"They've raised the chains," she says aloud, and the wind whips her words away.

She can barely see them from here save what glints with the occasional torch, the massive bronze statues fixed high on the cliffs creaking with strain as the chains rise from their feet. Water sluices from them in heavy sheets, the roiling ripples spreading outward like an aged mirror, flashing silver in long stripes save where the lone, small shadow arrows away from her, towards the rising chains, dauntless and without fear.

The _Call. The Siren's Call_ , chasing freedom—

"Go," Hawke breathes, her eyes stinging, her hair caught in the tossing winds, the tip of her staff digging into the tiles at her feet. It is a race to the very end, made worse by the knowing of who stands aboard, by the thought of Fenris watching back for her, somewhere, waiting, still waiting for her to come—and then with a great scrape of iron on wood and a lurching that makes her clutch her staff they are _through_ , uncatchable now with the wind behind them and Isabela at the wheel to guide her. The sails burst open, white wings in the dark, and the chains creak into place with a great groan that strikes the cliffsides and doubles again, and again, the sound of their escape, of her own abrupt heartache.

She watches until she cannot see them any longer, until the cliffs have swallowed them into the safety of darkness, until they are away and Fenris is _safe_.

She is grateful for that.

And now—

And now, Hawke thinks, slithering down the house's face, dropping the last feet with a jolt that makes her stomach lurch. Wycome. The Gull's Nest, on foot—nine days. Ten, maybe, if she must keep out of sight of the roads.

In minutes she is through Kirkwall's eastern gate, her head low and in shadow, the two unconscious guards hidden away behind a stack of crates. Only one more refugee from a city thrown to turmoil, only one more traveling Hawke, her pack on her shoulder, her father's staff in her hand: leaving her home one last time to follow after her heart.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recommended listening: [Sun Will Set](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfdPtNf7c4Y) by Zoe Keating.

By the time dawn comes Kirkwall has already disappeared to the road behind her. The weather is comfortably cool in the shadows of the trees that overhang the edges of the path, though the day promises enough dry heat that Hawke plans to make as much headway as possible while she can. While she has seen no one else yet, the freshness of the wagon tracks in the earth tells her this way is well-traveled and that there will be others; whether they will be civilians or templars she cannot hope to guess.

By tenth bell the day has begun to warm, a few stragglers beginning to pass this way or the other, and Hawke has grown uncomfortably aware of her armor. Not heavy enough to hurt, thank Andraste, but it had been forged for fighting and not long travel, and the chain shirt has begun to chafe through the padded tunic beneath. By eleventh she is sweating; by noon she is in the underbrush well away from the road, stripped to the waist, her face in a Maker-given stream and her hair dripping down her neck.

When she can breathe again Hawke sits back on her heels, shoving her hair from her face, and considers her options. She will not leave the armor behind—one of the few things she'd spared no expense on, every piece of it made to her exact specifications—but neither can she continue to wear it. Not only is it hot, but no refugee fleeing the chaos of Kirkwall would easily bear gauntlets worth ten sovereigns apiece.

She pulls her undershirt and tunic back over her head once she has scrubbed most of the blood from them ( _Fenris's_ blood, a little voice reminds her), pulling her hair through the neck and tying it into place again. The chainmail she rolls tightly and straps to the underside of her pack, where a bedroll was meant to hang; the gauntlets she can barely fit inside it, jammed into a corner where they will neither pierce her apples nor crush her mother's letters. One of the apples she takes with her to clear room if nothing else; in its place she stuffs the unnecessary furred hood and then pushes to her feet, swinging the pack into place on her back.

Better. Much better, if not perfect—she still wears the boots and gorget if nothing else, but there is little to do for that but avoid questions when she can, and in short order she is on the road again, apple between her teeth, her heart lighter than it has been in months.

—

For the next four days Hawke does little but walk and sleep in short, sporadic bursts. More travelers take to the roads the farther she is between cities, but most are leaving Kirkwall rather than heading for it, and it is easy enough to lose herself between a pair of wagons or a family with a small, crying child. She risks an inn the second night for the sake of a hot meal and a bath if nothing else, but otherwise the trees serve her well enough when she cannot force herself another step forward. She is grateful she'd paid so much for the boots, now. Three days' hard travel, and not one blister to show for it.

Damn the world, but she misses Fenris. Misses her dog, too, and Merrill, and Orana, and Aveline and Sebastian and _Anders—_

"Shut up," she says aloud, shaking her head, and ignores the glance from the man driving the cart of hay beside her. Aveline and Donnic are needed in Kirkwall, she knows that. No hand like theirs to keep the city running, even with Meredith gone, and Merrill will see to the elves' protection as well. Orana will be safe with her, with Toby.

She cannot think of Anders without anger, without regret. _Friends_ , she'd thought, for so many years, and still somehow she'd managed not to see the signs. Sebastian, too—she knows that sort of rage too well, knows the terrible promises it tears from souls, and if there's grief when she thinks of him too at least she knows where he _is._ So much harder to send letters of apology and explanation with no address to accept them. And Fenris—

Fenris will be fine. He's had worse injuries and less healing and survived them, and he would never permit the indignity of dying to a concussion. Not when she'd promised him, not when she'd let him make such a promise to her.

_Promise me you won't die—_

By the end of the fifth day Hawke is nearly out of supplies, and at dusk she trades a handful of silver to a traveling caravan of merchants for use of their food and their fire. They are a pleasant-enough group for how little Hawke intends to remain with them, traveling the opposite direction from her, but the news they bring is without price and she soaks up every word of Kirkwall like parched earth.

The Circle had fallen. That she'd known; she _hadn't_ realized that Cullen had allowed it, had instated a new First Enchanter within the day even as he took Meredith's duties for himself. The city had quieted after that, no revolts or riots after that first night—Hawke is grateful for that, too—though relations still strain at every crossroads of mage and templar and guard within its walls. And then—

"Seekers?" Hawke says, startled, and the woman speaking nods.

"From Orlais, they're saying. Right hand of the Divine, beholden to none but her."

"To restore order?"

"To hunt, the way I hear it," she says, and laughs.

Hawke forces a smile, lowering her eyes to her plate. Seekers, in _Kirkwall._ Perhaps Sebastian will not have to search so thoroughly for her after all. But soon enough the conversation turns to other news, other rumors, and the company takes up discussion of a friend's shop in Ostwick where his lead shophand had vanished without warning.

"Is Jame going to look for her?"

"Already sent guards after her," says the caravan's leader, a short, elderly man with a thin white beard. "He says she's always been steady and hardworking for all that she complains about shem, and he'd thought to sell her part of the store when he got ready to retire. Said she had a head for business like he'd never seen."

"Mm. And she's not run off with a lover?"

"Mother says she hadn't one."

The woman shakes her head, stabbing at her pheasant with a fork. "Told you those slavers were coming south."

Oh, thinks Hawke. Don't say it, don't—this is none of your business and you've got a promise to keep—

Hawke says, "Slavers?"

A band of them, not overlarge but growing bolder, from the south of Tevinter and encroaching ever further into the Free Marches with every raid. Small towns, they tell her, with small guards and few people to raise the cry if another orphan goes missing here and there. Until this most recent raid, when the elves they'd taken had been missed and the city outraged enough to call for aid that would not come swiftly.

Markham, they tell her. Southfort, too, a small town half a day's travel east from that city, into the hills.

The elf woman's mother has gone to Ostwick for aid, they say. No one will listen, but she will not be quiet. No one will help her. No one will—

Hawke cries that night, only a little, the heel of her hand pressed to her mouth to muffle the sound, midnight breezes swaying the leaves of the over-reaching trees above her. She writes a letter to Fenris, gives it to the caravan's leader to be posted at Kirkwall when they arrive. The post will be longer, they tell her, if made from Kirkwall and not Ostwick, but Hawke knows the delivery is safer the less she is involved, and she nods and smiles and hands the letter to them all the same. Then she sleeps, her face turned toward the sea, and in the morning she rises and squares her shoulders and takes the road to Ostwick.

—

Six days after she left Fenris bleeding on a ship, Hawke finds the woman's mother in Ostwick. She is older than Hawke expects, grey-haired, a sturdier elf than Marethari but with the same distant elegance, and it is not until Hawke buys her a hot meal and gives her a name—first, unused—that she is willing to believe her offer.

There is not much to tell. Her daughter's name is Elina, and she has worked for the human merchant Jame for nearly ten years in his Markham business. She has always been respectful and dependable if occasionally short-tempered; she has never kept a lover long; she has _never_ vanished without a word. Her brother waits in Markham for any news; her father has been dead six months. They had heard that slavers were near Southfort, but Elina had little patience for rumors; she'd tried to persuade her daughter not to walk alone without effect, and then one night like any other they had waited for her, and waited, and she had—never come.

There'd been other news after that, glimpses of a caravan with humans bearing whips at the edges of town, moving north; others vanishing along the same road at every stop. They had reinforced the guards there, but—no help came for the ones already taken, and none for elves at all, and when she had gone to the prison's warden at Southfort he had laughed in her face and sent her away.

_None of your business. None of your business, you utter fool. If Fenris were here—_

"I'll help you," Hawke says, and smiles.

—

She buys drinks at bars until tongues are loose. She speaks to the urchins, the street-runners without shoes and ears that hear more than they're intended; she goes to the brothel and waits until her man stumbles out into the evening, yawning, his arms stretched over his head, his guard's uniform askew across his shoulders.

She steps close, lifts a bag of silver between them, hefts its jingling weight in her palm until she has his whole attention. She says, "Tell me everything you know about Southfort's warden Grantham."

—

On the tenth night she has spent alone since Kirkwall fell, Hawke sits on an outcropped bluff high above the sea. The treeline thins maybe twenty yards from the cliff's edge, the light of her small, hearty campfire burning just within view of the road passing by beyond them. She's certain; she's checked it twice in the last hour.

Patience, however, has never been her virtue, and when the rolling black sea at her back throws up another spray of ice across her unprotected neck, she hisses under her breath and feeds flame into her circle of logs until they are burning brighter than ever. If she hadn't left her pack with Fenris's book and that thrice-blessed hood hidden in the trees—

A rustle in the night-dark woods. A branch breaking—and then a man's voice, cheerful and friendly. "Hallo!"

Hawke yanks her fingers from the fire just in time for a trader to emerge from the shadows of the treeline, one hand lifted in greeting. Square shoulders, average height, a dark, full beard; Hawke smiles, straightening, and inclines her head. "Evening."

"Sure is," he says, coming slowly into the light of her fire. He carries a pack of his own; at her gesture he drops it gratefully to the earth on the other side of her little clearing and sinks to his knees, both hands outstretched towards the fire and her fish slung carefully above it. "Mind if I rest with you here a few minutes? My feet have been aching for a furlough."

"Not at all. Have you traveled far today?"

"Some good miles. Hoped to make it a bit closer to Kirkwall before nightfall, though."

"Ah. It seems we're going opposite ways."

"Shame, that," he says with a warm smile. "A pretty thing like you shouldn't have to go any road alone."

Hawke titters. "That's too kind. I'm just trying to meet some friends of mine east from here."

"Oh? You've really come all this way by yourself?"

"It isn't so bad." She shrugs, fiddles daintily with a loop of hair falling over her shoulder. "I was just trying to get out of the mess in Kirkwall, and with no family there to look after me…"

"Poor girl." He reaches behind him and pulls a pair of hare from his belt. "Here. I'll sweeten the meal for you."

"How kind!" And she _does_ want them, actually, considering how long it's been since she's had a proper dinner, but despite their fragrant aroma and the mouthwatering sound of sizzling meat, she keeps herself to her fish and the last slices of roasted apple. "Tell me, have _you_ any family?"

"Cousin in Southfort," he says carelessly, picking a bit of hare from between his teeth, and Hawke checks her staff laid flat behind her.

"I hear Southfort is lovely this time of year."

"Ha! He runs the prison, so I'd reckon his view's the same year-round."

She makes a noise of agreement, smiles again at his grin. Something moves in the trees, a glimmer of animal eyes; Hawke forces her eyes to her empty plate until her heart calms, then leans back on her hands to listen. The trader talks a while longer, taking her silence as invitation, telling her of his journey south and the conditions of the roads, of the rainstorm he'd been caught in two days back, of the pleasantness of her own charming company. She laughs again, gaze flicking to the underbrush, and he leans forward into the full light of the campfire, smiling.

"So," the trader says, his voice low, "I never caught your name."

Her lips part—

—and the first mabari tears out of the trees towards them.

" _No!_ " the trader shouts, leaping to his feet, but Hawke already has staff in hand. Galling, that battle and death should come as relief—but as the lead mabari leaps towards her through the sparking campfire, snarling, spittle flying from its teeth, she has no time and no mind to spare.

Its teeth lock to her staff and the weight nearly throws her to the ground. She doesn't dare fire, not with the trader leaping for his short knife, not with who knows how many still lurking in the woods. The dog snaps again, teeth gouging white scars into the polished darkwood; Hawke puts a hand to her forehead and _shoves_ and the dog goes flying backwards with a yelp, long enough for her to stagger to her feet. Barks ring out across the clearing, echoing weirdly back from the sea; she rakes her hair from her eyes and snatches a breath, looking for shadows, for green eyes—

Three more. Three more, maybe four—the trader has one circling the fire, obviously drawn here by the smell of spitted hare. The dogs are lean and rangy, hungry but not starved, though there is more than one scar around their muzzles to tell her they are not untouched by human hands. The first one she struck has not moved again.

The dog leaps. The trader's knife flashes in the firelight—and it falls, dead, pierced to the hilt in the heart. A curse blisters the air as the trader tries to pull it free again, but before he can loose it another mabari is on him, sprawling him to his back beside the campfire, the knife skittering away from his hand.

There is no time—only white teeth slavering for the trader's throat, his arms useless and bleeding—

Hawke _slams_ the tip of her staff into the ground. Force ripples outward, a sheer wall of pressure as inexorable as a rushing tide. The campfire sputters out before it to throw the world into darkness—the dog lets out a startled cry of sudden pain as it falls away and she winces—but it's the trader's eyes that lock her in place in the abrupt night, accusation and realization and sudden fear all mingled to tell her she has risked too much. _Careful, here. Oh, damn it, be careful!_

His stare drops to the ground behind her. A low rumbling growl, the knotted tensing of muscle—the last dog. The last—

Hawke closes her eyes. Her staff falls to the grass with a quiet thump.

Her last thought, before it springs, is that she hopes they fight it off her quickly.

—

By the time the ringing in her ears has dulled enough for her to form coherent thought, she is already in the covered wagon hidden just off the road. She shakes her head roughly, dislodging hay from her hair, but does not try to rise; voices come from just outside, the trader's and another she does not yet know, a high, nervous tenor with a faint lisp.

"I'm telling you, she's no ordinary apostate! Who d'you know who runs around with a staff like this, who don't flinch when mad dogs are running at her?"

"I don't know, ser, I just—"

"And those were _good_ dogs, you ruddy idiot. What were you thinking bringing them up so close?"

"You said to bring the men, ser, and they were tied to the wagon when we came."

A slap. "Well, they didn't _stay_ there, did they?"

"No! No, ser. I'm sorry, ser."

A pause, then, full of disdain: "You'll be paying for their replacements the moment we get back to Southfort. This never happens again, Walter, hear me?"

Walter's voice is muffled, as if through his own hand. "I hear you, ser."

Hawke rolls to her back, gingerly testing her muscles and scrapes. Not bad, considering: a few scratches and gouges on the back of her neck, a pulled muscle in her back, the leather of her belt nicked but still functional. _There, Fenris. I'm gagged and tied wrist to ankle in the back of a slaver's wagon, but for once, everything's under control._ She heals the muscle out of habit, though leaves the scabbing marks on her neck for evidence, and settles again. An owl calls in the distance, hunting for prey.

"Just get her out of here. Get her to Grantham and tell him I'm staying the course to Kirkwall. With the mess there nobody'll notice a few more gone missing."

"But you said she's a mage, ser!"

"And I've got _this_." There's a knock of knuckle on wood and Hawke clenches her eyes closed—her father's staff. Her _father's—_ but she'd known the moment she set the plan she wouldn't keep it, had depended on that for the sake of the girl she means to rescue. Let it go. Let it _go_. "You saw how she went down the moment she dropped it. Mages aren't worth salt without a staff."

"What if she's got spells, ser? Or—or runes? Or poultices?"

There's another smack, and then the trader's voice drops dangerously low. "She was carrying a little bag of coin and a waterskin, Walter, and not a shred of anything else. I'm taking this staff to Kirkwall and I'm going to look until I find out exactly who she is and how much she's worth, and I don't want to hear _another_ word out of you unless it's 'yes, ser.' You understand me?"

A heavy swallow. "Yes, ser."

"Good. Now get your arse on that wagon and get her the Void out of here."

"Ser," Walter says again, cowed, and the wagon rocks with his weight as he swings aboard. A brief blaze of torchlight as the trader lifts the cloth-cover at her feet to glance in at her; she musters herself enough for a fiery glare—sans fire, regrettably—and spits something uncomplimentary through the gag.

"Sorry, dearie," he says, shaking his head. "Can't be helped."

Hawke sneers again, disgusted, and he lets the flap fall between them without looking at her again. Low orders to a pair of thick shadows beside the wagon—the hired muscle, she supposes, since Walter can apparently barely command himself—and then the wagon shifts again as they climb on, one to the wide board at Hawke's feet, one to the seat beside Walter. A click of the tongue and a snap of reins and they are moving—and a moment later, the soft pale glow of the trader's lantern winks out into darkness.

A long silence, then Walter, just loud enough to hear over the creak of harness and wagon: "I hope we know what we're doing."

Hawke grimaces through the gag. So does she.


	8. Chapter 8

If I could have your arms tonight—  
But half the world and the broken sea  
Lie between you and me.

If you were here, if you were only here—  
My blood cries out to you all night in vain  
As sleepless as the rain.  
—Sara Teasdale

—

Two days later, the wagon reaches Southfort. It has been in all respects an unpleasant journey, even more than she'd expected; between the uncushioned wagonbed throwing her off her balance with every jolt and the mercenaries who guard her even when relieving herself, Hawke's patience has run nearly thin enough to throw up the ruse altogether in a column of blazing fire. Walter, a slender man with a thatch of pale, wispy hair short close to his ears, is still as intimidating as slightly damp bread; the thick-set guards are still just as silent and effective where he is not, though she's since learned their names to be George and something beginning with an L. Leonard, perhaps.

Not that it particularly matters, she supposes, as thus far they have proven entirely interchangeable in their implacable disregard for anything remotely regarding her comfort.

The wagon hovers on the edge of town until the small hours of the morning, when even the guard has gone sparse and the town itself gone still and silent. George clambers into the back of the wagon with her in silence, his stare enough to set her heart racing; then they lurch forward and he catches her around the waist, one meaty hand enough to hold her in place against the wall. His other hand holds an unfolded, stained black sheet.

Deep breaths—wait. Wait. Fire tingles down the bones of her fingers, ready to be loosed—and then Walter knocks a fist against the post beside his seat with a hollow noise, and in an instant's whirl of cloth and movement Hawke is trussed head-to-toe in black, tossed over George's broad shoulder, and carried bodily into the night.

A dozen steps, maybe—then indoors and down a hundred stairs and up six or seven more, through pitch-black hallways and rooms lit by torches bright enough to be seen even through the sheet. Hawke finds herself impressed despite herself at George's fortitude, considering her constant thrashing within her wrapping; and then she is abruptly thrown to the ground hard enough to knock her breath away, and for a moment she does not fight the hands that reach down to pull away the sheet. They are hardly gentle—she expects nothing else—but she cries out once when they close unexpectedly on a deep bruise on her shoulder, a remnant of a half-hearted escape attempt the first day, and receives a painful clench of fingers around her mouth for her trouble.

"Be quiet," says George, his heavy brow drawn low over his eyes. "Stop moving."

She does. He pulls the rest of the sheet away and she blinks; a prison, or something like it, iron-barred cells lining a narrow central aisle. The smell of dank hay and sweat and urine—eyes watching her from the darkness, the cells themselves unlit, windowless save one high barred square at the end of the hall. No torches. Not even brackets to hold them, and Hawke shudders. She does not like—

"In," says George, a cell door helpfully held open by one enormous arm. "No magic."

"No staff," Hawke points out, wiggling her fingers between them. George's lip curls up—and she steps forward into the cell, perhaps a touch faster than dignity might suggest, but she has no wish for more bruises to leave unhealed for the sake of subterfuge. No company, either; her cell is empty save her. Six square feet, maybe, hay and a low brittle cot in one corner, a rank wooden bucket in the other. "Ah. A private room."

"Shut up."

"Just as you like."

"I said," George snarls, leaning close enough to her still-open door that adrenaline rockets down her spine, "shut—"

"Now," says a new voice, affectedly cultured, and a fresh torch marks the entrance of a middle-aged man with a square, shaven jaw and a gold ring in his right ear. His overtunic has been embroidered in gold too, expensive taste for a small-town mercantile, and as he comes to her door she catches the scent of pomade. "What have we here?"

George closes her cell door with the finality of stone, key twisting in the lock until it latches, then takes Grantham's torch and steps back. "From the road, ser."

"Charming. Has she a temperament?"

"Never, ser," Hawke offers, resting her elbows on the crossbar. "I'm allergic."

Grantham smiles to reveal an incisor capped with gold glittering in the torchlight. "A sharp tongue for a halfwit."

"Better halfwit than slaver."

He guffaws. "Ah, George! Do you hear how she speaks to me? Perhaps you better tell Roald to find more like her. Entertainment, spirit—they'll pay double her worth for such a sweet creature."

It is too easy. She ought to guard her tongue— "Twice nothing is still nothing."

"And _arrogant_ , too." He reaches through the bars for her chin, but Hawke jerks away from his ringed fingers. After a brief, thoughtful look, he says to George, "When did Roald say he'd be back?"

"Not. He continued to Kirkwall. We were to bring her here, then join him. To get some of the dregs from the city before order got restored, ser."

Grantham frowns, his lips pursing together. "Some of these will have been here near three weeks by the time he returns."

"Those were only our orders, ser."

"Alas." Grantham sighs, then smiles at Hawke. "Don't worry, lamb. You won't be here nearly so long. Do try to make yourself comfortable."

She says nothing until he turns to leave; then, her anger rising in the back of her mind like a wave, she snaps, "It's despicable, you know. What you're doing. Preying like this on innocent people who are just trying to get away from a city that can't protect them, daring to do it in the middle of the Free Marches!"

"There's always coin for people like me, girl," he says, and glances at her over his shoulder. "Even if I have to get it out of people like you."

Then the door slams behind him, and the prison cells go dark.

—

Well.

"That could have gone better," Hawke says to no one, and gingerly feels for the bars in front of her face, made invisible in the sudden darkness after torchlight. Not _much_ better, all things considering, but she can still feel Fenris's glare from Wycome.

_Still under your control, Hawke?_

_Naturally_ , she thinks, and leans forward until her forehead rests on the cool iron. "Hello?" she calls. "New-issue chattel here, ready to make friends and carry chains."

There's a bitter snort from low in the cell across from her, a shift of movement she can almost map to a shoulder, a lifted hand. A woman says, "You won't last long if you keep provoking them."

"I don't plan to stay nearly that long," Hawke tells her. "How many of you are there?"

"Thirteen, with you. Three each in four cells, and you alone. Congratulations."

Thirteen. "All grown? Men, women?"

A sharper gesture, the tone instantly defensive. "Why do you care? Shut up and sit down."

"I'm sorry, I didn't—"

"I don't want to hear it. Don't say another word. Nobody answer her, not for anything."

"I'm only trying to—"

"Shut _up,_ shem!"

"Elina!" Hawke snaps, because her eyes have at last adjusted to the dark, because the daughter carries the same proud nose as her mother, the same smooth cheekbones, even if one is discolored by a bruise.

Her eyes go wide. She rolls to her knees at the bars, enough moonlight to put faint auburn color to her braided hair. "How do you know that name?"

"Your mother sent me," Hawke says, and quirks a weary smile. "I've come to take you home."

—

There are children in the cells. Two boys, one girl, all younger than twelve. They are orphans of Blight and war, plucked from the streets like delicacies, unmissed and unmourned. Hawke nearly abandons the plan once more at that, incensed beyond fury at the audacity of Grantham and his cousin, but when Elina tells her of a second group of slavers, left the day before for Hercinia with plans to rendezvous at the Minanter with their own new-acquired slaves, she swallows down her anger a second time, forces her flame-sparking fingers to calm themselves again.

It's not as bad as it could be, Elina tells her. The city's eponymous fort serving as the prison is set far from the town proper and spelled against their shouting, but they are at least granted fresh air and daylight via the open window. Neither Grantham nor Roald permits their hired thugs to sport with the merchandise; they are business, strict and straightforward, and damaged goods bring less coin at market. They are fed daily, the pots emptied twice a week, permitted fresh water every other morning. It is _appalling,_ and yet—Hawke knows precisely what she means.

Assets, then. Elina knows some knifework. One of the other men, tall and slender, is good with knots and rope; a dark young man with enormous eyes and black hair claims a little skill with a bow. That they have none of those things does not matter now; Hawke puts them safely in the back of her mind to await opportunity.

None claim apostate.

Fair enough. She supposes she wouldn't either, not the first night; if there are any, they have either hidden it well enough to fool templars all their lives or they have little enough strength to hide, and either way will be scarce help in battle. She will have to be enough.

_This plan is beyond reckless. You know this_.

Hawke rolls her shoulders, flicks her hair from her eyes. "Can't be helped," she murmurs aloud. "For now, we ought to get some sleep while we can."

"I agree," says Elina, and with her approval the others begin to settle for the night, low murmurs as they arrange themselves in their tiny cells, feet to feet and shoulder to shoulder where they can. For her part Hawke sits with her back to the wall, close enough to the iron bars to have full sight of the high window, the handful of clear stars that burn white beyond it.

Fenris is waiting for her in Wycome.

Fenris is waiting for her, on her word, and she is—what is she _doing_? Sitting in a tiny cell in an inconsequential town to thwart the plans of a small man with a miser's streak because she can't keep her nose out of trouble and she can't let an innocent suffer without stopping. If she'd gone to Wycome first—

If she'd gone to Wycome first, Elina would have been lost. More than a week to travel there and back again on foot, and enough empty fields and forests south of the Minanter that she would have never found Grantham's men again. Even without her father's staff she is a formidable mage and she _knows_ this—there is no real danger to her yet save what risks she gives herself.

A few days. Only a few days, and then her letter will arrive and Fenris will know.

_Wait for me_ , she thinks, and closes her eyes. _Fenris, please. Wait for me a little longer._

—

Besides the children and Hawke herself, there are six men and three women. Most of them are from villages and small towns scattered between Markham and Ostwick, though two of the men hail from Hercinia's dockside slumhouses. No one to miss them, any of them, and no one but Hawke here to keep Grantham at bay.

Leonard and George she does not see again after that first day. Gone to Kirkwall, she supposes; their food is brought instead by Walter, a freshly-blacked eye testament to his fall from favor, and no matter how Hawke coaxes he will not speak to her. He only leaves the trays and bowls at their doors, takes the soiled pots, brings them back again, and closes them back into the dark. Grantham comes only twice, once to ask her questions she does not answer, once to press the young man with black eyes for the places where street rats might hide in Ostwick—no answers there, either, though he is crying by the time Grantham leaves again, and the tall man with the shaved head speaks quietly to him for some time after.

Darren. Young Darren almost sixteen, she reminds herself, and the older man—Simon? Maybe Simon. Simon, who was taken from an alley in Hercinia while drunk out of his mind, who knows a little of ropes.

Two days pass in the cells. Then three, and then four, and when it becomes apparent that the doors will not open again until they are to be moved Hawke begins to exercise in the farthest corner, her feet tucked under the bars, her over-tunic and belt folded behind her head for padding. Elina snorts the first time and turns her back, the watery light from the one window catching on strands of auburn in her braid; regardless, over the next few days Hawke hears her bending too, stretching as best she can in the cramped spaces they are given.

Elina does not trust her, not really. Hawke can hardly blame her; hard to trust the word of a total stranger who promised rescue only to be thrown in a cell like all the others, as apparently trapped by iron as any mortal. Her mother's word had done some, and Hawke's own confidence still more—but until she can prove herself to the lot of them they will not follow.

Only—she can do nothing until they rendezvous with the second group of slaves and slavers at the Minanter. If she means to save them she must _find_ them; if she is to tear this ring apart before it can sell another soul she must bear Grantham's jeers and Elina's mistrust with what equanimity she can. To show herself apostate would win them if nothing else, she knows—but the moment she reveals herself to be mage is the moment she gives her life to them in trust, and she has already promised that life to another. For Fenris's sake Hawke is resolved to keep that silence as long as possible. The rest—does not matter.

Still. Still, to see the hope fade day by day from Elina's eyes, to hear the crying of the children two cells over that she can neither ease nor keep from returning, to watch the sun rise and set and rise again with no change at the end of the day from the start—

It is _hard._

_—_

Six days after her arrival, it begins to rain. It is a slow, heavy sheeting that fills the prison air to something thick and humid, raindrops beating on a tin overhang nearby with a high sharp plinking just irregular enough to keep her from drowsing. The children are asleep, Elina tells her; Darren and the third man in his cell whose name Hawke has not yet learned are speaking quietly of their homes; Hawke herself is bare-footed, cross-legged against the wall so that she can watch the downpour, the unbroken grey-slate sky.

She's been here six days. Six days—and ten before that, sixteen total since Kirkwall. Over half a month since the Gallows fell.

Half a month since she's seen Fenris.

He had been so _hurt_. She hopes—and Hawke bites the inside of her cheek as hard as she can, killing that thought before it can root. He lives and is well. She's sure of it. If she's managed to truss herself so neatly for acknowledged slavers and come out no worse the wear—yet—then he, who has always had much more reliable survival instincts than she, must certainly be safe and hale. Carver wouldn't have let him linger unhealed as it is; her brother has always had a knack for bullying people into their convalescence, even if he himself had been one of the most frustratingly stubborn patients in Thedas.

She wonders if he's received her letter.

She should have told him more. She should have…she doesn't know. Had him come here sooner, perhaps. Or even had him go away with Isabela altogether until Hawke could get free, until the Marches were calm again, until they could stop _running_ for once and just live somewhere, together, sleeping and waking without fearing the deaths of days yet to come.

Stupid elf. Stupid, foolish, idiot Hawke, for thinking that even for sixteen days she could keep from missing half her heart.

It is not until Elina murmurs her name that Hawke realizes how near she is to tears. She passes an alarmed hand across her eyes and is relieved to find them dry; easier now too is the sound of a name she has not used regularly in ten years, and she shakes her head roughly at the loss hidden there before looking across the narrow aisle.

"Something wrong?"

"I meant to ask you that," Elina says, her voice still low. One of the other women in her cell is dozing, her narrow figure curled against the back wall; the third is a younger woman, barely out of her adolescence, who has only twice lifted her head from her knees that Hawke has seen and has yet to speak in Hawke's presence. "You looked—lost."

"Thinking of some friends," she says, a corner of her mouth quirking up. "I was on my way to meet them when I heard of you and your mother. I was only… I don't know. Wondering how they're faring, I suppose."

"And now you're here." A challenge, subtle and barbed. Elina's eyes are very steady.

"And now I'm here. For a few days more, at least."

"You keep saying things like that."

"I mean them."

Elina snorts, barely audible over the steady drumming of the rain. "I wish I could believe you."

"It's all right. I understand why you don't."

Elina snorts again, rolling her head back against the limestone walls that separate each cell, her dark eyes turned upward to the cracked, dank ceiling. "You act like you know what you're doing. Maybe you do. But you're in here just like the rest of us, and so far as I can tell you've got just as little chance as we do at seeing our families again."

"I know." Hawke blows out a breath, at once frustrated beyond words and _furious_ at this whole fiasco, at Grantham and Roald who began it, at Walter and George and Leonard and every thrice-cursed spiteful whoreson abetting it even now. "I _know_. I know I've given you nothing but a stranger's word that I mean to get you all out of this alive. That there's nothing—that there's nothing I can say to change that, no simple way for you to open me up and understand that I don't promise such things lightly. I _know_ that. But—"

"But you expect us to all the same."

"I don't expect anything of you that you aren't willing to give. I swore to you that this will end the moment we meet the others, and I meant it. If you knew—"

"If I knew _what_?"

_Why should she trust you, Hawke?_

_I don't know! I don't know, Fenris. I can't give her anything of meaning, not a single shred of proof. She doesn't know me—I've not even trusted her with my name. Who am I to tell her I can help her?_

_You gave me your word, once._

_Was that enough?_

_It was for me._

Hawke closes her eyes, opens them again. She does not know what is in her face, whether her choices are written in her look; without a word she shifts to her knees, one hand wrapping around the iron bars of her cell door, the other cupped at her own throat. There is something surging in her, an answer without a question, a fool's leap with no promise of earth or sea to catch her. Elina's eyes are very wide—

No one else to see. Elina's cell unattending, the men beside lost to their own conversation, the children quiet, the sluicing sheets of grey rain to turn to the world outside to a ghost's shadow. She catches a breath, then another, her heart leaping to her throat—

Hawke calls for fire.

It's only an instant, only a flare of fist-sized flame held against her chest like a jewel. Elina sucks in a breath—and Hawke drowns the light again, her fingers clenching in on themselves, choking it into nothing as if it had never been. A fool's hope—

Elina looks up. Her lips part; she shapes the word _apostate._

Hawke's skin tingles with fire, with the memory of fire, her nerves just as alight. She nods, once, deliberately.

And Elina _smiles,_ a bright strong hopeful thing, the first one Hawke has seen, fierce enough to break through even the heavy skies that hang so low and thick above them like a shaft of summer sun.

She says, "I believe you."


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recommended listening: [1953 by Ólafur Arnalds.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grXrvUt1vTw)

Seventeen days after Kirkwall, and one full week after Roald had stridden into the light of her campfire on the high cliff-road to Ostwick, Hawke wakes to the rough clamour of George's boot against her cell bars. Elsewhere she can hear the groans and murmurs of Walter waking the others, his pale hair a smear in the darkness of the unlit cells; across the aisle Elina's eyes catch hers just for an instant with a glimmer-green flash in the dark. She nods and Elina grips the youngest's arm, and then they stand together.

"Hands," George says curtly.

Hawke thrusts them through one of the gaps between the bars, and in less than sixty seconds she is trussed wrist-to-wrist in thick, heavy rope. "Step back," George says then, and she does; the hemp is rough and chafes at every movement, but there is little Hawke can do but wait as he moves cell to cell, slave to slave, binding them for sale. Walter comes next, with black cloth clutched between his hands: hoods, though not enough for them all. One for young Darren, one for quiet Simon, one for Elina, one for Hawke.

"Don't do anything stupid," Walter says, his words soft with both lisp and sleep.

Hawke rolls her eyes beneath the hood, leaning closer to where she thinks his head might be. "I'm not the one selling people," she murmurs, just as low. He says nothing. But there is a pause, as if at a signal—and then the rasp of metal on metal as the doors open all at once, and then a lead is clipped to the rope between Hawke's thumbs and a tug follows sharp enough to unbalance her. Another jolt as someone collides with her hip—one of the children, she realizes at the high gasp, whose faces she still has not yet seen—and Walter yanks at her lead again, and the child's lead with her, and at last, after seven days, they are leaving.

How fortunate for the hood! No slaver could see her feral grin and think her helpless here.

Down the dozen steps, and up the hundred more to the streets, stopping halfway for the children to rest only because Walter fears them crying, and then one bright breath of clean night air before Hawke barks both shins on the back stair to a wagon. Someone grips her arm like a vise—George, then—and says, "Up."

She goes up. The wagon rocks with others clambering in after her, and a few feet away another's joists creak and sway as the rest take to its dubious protection; the air has changed with the close cover of the cloth braced over the wagonbed, and Hawke does her best to settle against an upright post as the last of her anonymous companions settle around her.

A low call: Leonard, taking the driver's seat of the other wagon. Then another shift as George clambers to the front of their own, and then—

"Don't waste an instant's time, boy." Grantham. _Grantham_ , and if Hawke's plan has a single flaw it is that Grantham will survive it for the moment. "Get there, meet the second group, and come back the moment you've got gold in hand. Something's gone off in Kirkwall, and with Leonard and George not able to get into the city we'll have to wait for my cousin's word."

"Yes, ser."

"And don't let any of them talk too long to the newest. She's canny."

"Yes, ser."

"And for the _Maker's_ sake, try to keep your wits about you. This is the last time I'll be so patient with you, Walt, and don't dare forget it."

"Thank you, Father."

A noise of disgust. "Get on the wagon."

Walter does. Hawke closes her eyes, tries to keep her head from shaking. No wonder that Grantham and Roald tolerated his reliable fallibility; no wonder, too, that Walter cowed so easily beneath their disdain. A shame for them both.

The wagons lurch forward. One of the horses drawing them nickers and stamps and the sound of a jingling bit carries into the early hour of the night. George curses under his breath, and then the wheels begin to crunch heavily over stone, and—

They are off.

—

By dawn, they are well along the northeast trade road towards Ansburg. Hawke, her hood pulled away by the child beside her in the first moments, keeps her head pressed to the corner post, her gaze on the narrow gap in the cloth-cover to the roads beyond. Not once do they branch away to a side road; as far as Hawke can tell their captors are flush with habit's success and spurred at the same time by fear, by whatever misfortune has befallen Roald in Kirkwall.

Flattened by one of the giant Twins, she hopes. Their feet are bound by rock and cliff, but she enjoys the thought of them shaking their fists at passersby, throwing bits of rubble at whatever souls they deem unjust. Roald they ought to throw handily into the bay. _Grantham_ they ought to—

The boy tugs at her hip.

"Yes?" she says softly, glancing at the enormous dark eyes framed by coarse black hair, the broad nose, the mouth better-suited for a smile pinched tight in anxiety. "Is something wrong?"

He leans up, gripping her shoulder for balance. He cannot be older than nine. "Lady, I'm scared."

Ah, _child._ "I know," Hawke says, and sighs. At the other end of the wagon quiet Simon meets her eyes, gives a short nod. "I bet you want to go home, hm?"

"Well—I just—not home." He scrubs at one cheek with the heel of his hand. "I want to be—not—here."

"I know," Hawke says again, helplessly, and his face falls.

Then: "Come here," says Simon, his voice barely audible over the creaking of the wheels. The boy flinches, eyes huge, but Simon only waits; and then he goes, lurching once with the sway of the wagon, until he is in Simon's lap with his knees tucked under his chin, one of Simon's arms around his shoulders. Hawke watches them only a moment more, his young, dark skin a contrast to Simon's lighter Orlesian coloring—but within the minute the boy's eyes have begun to droop, his ludicrously over-bound wrists falling limp to his lap. Simon nods at Hawke once more, then leans his shaved head back against the stiffened canvas and closes his eyes himself.

Something turns over in Hawke's heart. Something—longing—and she shakes her head roughly, turning away, back to the safety of her little crack of sky and earth.

By the end of the day every muscle in her body is aching from the wagon's roll and heave and the cramped quarters, rank with long-unwashed bodies in too close a space. The youngest child, a girl with brown eyes and hair nearly light as Fenris's, has cried and stilled and begun to cry again, low hiccuping sobs that bounce oddly off the low-hung wagon-cover. Worse, it has grown hot with the afternoon and no breeze to break it; by the time the wagons come to a long-overdue halt and George, implacable, throws open the flap to permit them exit, Hawke's tunic and trousers are soaked at every joint with sweat.

She would kill a man for a bath. Instead she holds out her rope-chafed wrists to be clipped to a lone lead instead of a long line like the others, last out of the wagon, held personally to George's side by glare and snare alike. He glances once at the smattering of empty hoods left in the wagonbed, but apparently decides them not worth the effort.

Still. _Wind_ , and standing on her own feet, stretching her arms above her head as best she can, bending forwards and backwards until the bones of her back give a satisfying pop. The Vimmark peaks had given way to lower hills and prairies hours ago; they camp now behind one of those hills, a southern finger of the Minanter wound around its base before turning again to the east, following the trade road they have momentarily abandoned. The sun has sunk low in the sky, washing everything thick and gold, and when Hawke looks wistfully to the river it throws back a flash of light brilliant enough to blind her.

She stretches again, glances at George. "I don't suppose you'd mind if I…?"

"Stay."

"Listen, I don't know if you've noticed—or smelled—but I am _perspiring,_ and I would very much like to—"

He yanks the rope hard enough that she stumbles, irritation in every solid square line of his body. " _Shut_ _up_."

"Fine," she mutters, and tries to tamp down her jealousy as Leonard and Walter walk the others to the river's edge. Most of them are looped together and left to their own, though a few are singly held like Elina and Hawke, like the small blonde girl who could not keep from crying. Elina looks back only once, her auburn braid dripping with river-water, determination like stone in her eyes, and Hawke's heart lifts despite her own discomfort. So close. They are _so_ close to having done with this.

And then the little girl who cried somehow slips free of the lead hooked to her still-tied hands, and in a flash of pale hair and grubby dress she is _off,_ blind flight at an angle into the hills.

There is a moment of perfect silence, sunlight held still by the river, and then the camp explodes into chaos.

George swears—a terrific blow to the back of Hawke's head drops her like a rock—and then feet pounding the earth away from her, tilting crazily with the ground.

"You bloody _idiot_!" Leonard snaps at Walter, apoplectic, yanking uselessly at the dropped lead as Elina staggers into the river behind him. "Useless lump of horseshit! You _never replaced the dogs!_ "

"I—" Walter stammers, flinching back into the tense, murmuring slaves, finding them little protection and as unyielding. "I—"

Risky enough to chance magic where they might see, but no one is watching her in the distant grass as it is; Hawke drags healing magic to the base of her skull through the daze, burning away the fog of pain as quickly as she can, stumbling to her feet the instant after. Then she is off, fast as she can after George, after the girl, ignoring the shouts and cries behind her, ignoring the scream of fire and ice behind every sharp breath. Not yet. _Not yet_!

She catches George just as he reaches the girl struggling up the base of a hill. She has caught herself on brambles, her dress shredding at the hem as she yanks at it; then George's hand fists into her hair like an iron vise, dragging her backwards through the bushes until he can get better hold of her, until one hand is clamped hard over her shoulder and she is _screaming_ and his other hand is in the air, clenched—

The blow lands just to the right of Hawke's spine, knocking the breath out of her with a quick sigh. The girl stares up at her, tears tracing tracks in the filth on her cheeks and Hawke tries to—and then the girl has sprawled to the earth and George has Hawke in his grip instead, his hand around her throat, the world spinning around her as he drags her face to his.

"What are you doing?" he snarls. His spittle lands on Hawke's cheek, on her lower lip.

"I don't know," she gasps, and her head snaps back at his next blow.

It is not long. She cannot count—but it is not long, George's rage bright but quickly burnt, a handful of punches and kicks to her jaw and shoulders, to her ribs when she falls. Nothing worse than one breaking at the last blow. Nothing worse than bruises, and stars in her eyes, and breath come thin and wheezing. She is on her knees—

Hawke lifts her head long enough to see George dragging the girl back to the others by her bound hands across the plain, thrusting her bodily at Leonard and the unclipped lead he still holds. Neither of them looks at Walter even once. Hawke sucks in air, guides a thin silver stream of magic along the broken bone, easing it home again, knitting the break together as best she can.

Then George is back before her and Hawke lets it sputter out, gasping again, praying he has not seen—but he only takes her lead in hand and turns again, striding forward without care for whether she walks or drags behind him. She _does_ drag the first few feet, dirt scraping her palms; then somehow she finds purchase and manages to stand, to trip her way after him without falling again. Elina catches her eye again, head lifted—proud—and Simon nods, his face pale as he clutches the hand of the small boy beside him, and there is something fierce in Darren's face to make her heart race. The silent girl is watching her, too, alarm and—awe?

George throws her bodily to the earth beside the wagon and knots her rope lead to its dented wheel. No river for her, then—and no food either, she realizes, as the hours pass and the fire is lit and stoked and the potatoes laid atop it, and roasted, and dispersed again without her privy to their meal. She doesn't mind the potatoes, really, but her mouth is dry as dust and she _stinks_ , enough that she can hardly bear it. Even Orana's Orlesian soaps could do little for this smell; she will have to burn everything she touches.

She dozes lightly when they kill the fire, when Leonard and Walter arrange the prisoners to their liking in a circle beneath the starless sky. Elina is clipped at last to the others; the girl is tied between the small boy and Simon, her wrists knotted to a new rope at her waist. Her face is white.

A _child_. A frightened child, and they dare—

Still. Somehow they sleep, and somehow Hawke sleeps, and between one hour and the next a cloudy, cool morning manages to find its way to them all the same. Even when he unties her from the wagon and thrusts her into its shadowed interior George does not speak to her, does not give her a drop of water despite her hoarse suggestions. A few minutes later and the others file in twos and threes, some the same as before, some from the other wagon—and the last is Elina, her dirty braid hanging low over her shoulder, her eyes lifting to Hawke's the moment the flap falls shut behind her.

There is something in that arrogance, that _assurance_ , something in the way they do not even tie the wagons closed, trusting the prisoners' own fear to keep them docile—but Hawke cannot sift through it now and puts it to the side, because Elina has risen with the wagons rolling into motion again and crossed the jumble of limbs and bodies to Hawke's side, her bound hands cupped at her waist.

Water. A small, leaking, oiled leather bag, full to the brim with water.

Heady with gratitude, Hawke can barely lift it to her mouth through the trembling in her hands. Elina helps, guiding the weight of it from Hawke's grip; she drains the whole thing in a matter of moments, greedy gulping gasps that spill down her cheeks despite her best efforts. Like Andraste herself has reached down—

When it is empty Hawke slumps against the corner post, still shaking, still half-blind with relief, hardly caring that the wood digs into the muscles along her spine or that Elina is smiling at her clumsiness. "You looked thirsty," she says, her voice low, her eyebrows lifted.

Hawke snorts, recapping the skin, and tosses it at Elina. "I only didn't want you to be carrying all that extra weight. You'll need both hands today."

Elina hefts the small, empty bag in her palms, then reaches up with still-tied wrists to one of the slender poles that arches over them when the wagon jolts at a rock in the road. "Well. If you're to save us all, you might as well have the strength to do it."

"I'm not saving anyone. I'm helping you save yourselves."

" _Tch._ " Elina rolls her eyes, shakes loose a bit of hair caught on her pointed ear. "Do you actually believe those lines?"

Hawke opens her mouth—and a sudden, vivid image of Fenris appears instead, a moment when she'd said something similar on a quiet walk home from the Hanged Man, and he'd rolled his eyes and his lip had curled and he'd said _you cannot possibly believe such sentimentality, Hawke._ She'd laughed, she remembers, and his sneer had given way to a smirk, and when she'd nudged him a little with her hip he'd caught her around the waist instead, pulling her from the street into the shadows of the ivy-grown overhangs that lined the walls of Hightown. She'd laughed again, and turned up her face, and his fingers had been so warm on her jaw as he'd leaned near, and his eyes had been even warmer—

A hand on her shoulder. Narrower, and lighter—and hazel eyes instead of green, and her first name, her unused name, not _Hawke_. Less tenderness with her concern.

"I'm sorry," Hawke says abruptly, and forces something like a smile. "Sorry. Caught in daydreams."

"Vivid ones to take such hold," Elina says, clearly unconvinced, but she straightens and draws her hand away, loosens the white knuckles around the waterskin in her other. "Family?"

Nearly all she has left. Instead she says, "A friend."

Elina sighs, sinks down to the rough wooden boards beside her, her fist pressed to her mouth. Her gaze is distant, and Hawke remembers the elegant face, dignified with age, proud even when asking for Hawke's help to find her daughter. "You must miss them."

Hawke closes her eyes, thinks of the press of Fenris's mouth against her own, of the way his hands had moved so carefully into her hair at first, as if he could not bear to touch her—and then the sudden falling away of all hesitation, like rust, like old armor no longer needed, of how he'd sighed into her mouth and how he'd _held_ her tight enough against his chest they neither of them could breathe, as if it was all he'd wanted, as if there was no moment ever between them other than that one, in silence, with no time but their hearts beating and no light but what eased through the clouded night-star skies above them.

He'd smiled, then; she'd held his hand. It had been enough.

She says, "I do."


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recommended listening: [The Surface of the Sun](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWlXU2DeYkQ) from the Sunshine OST.

It must be near second bells of the afternoon by the time the tired, dusty caravan reins to a halt at last. Hawke straightens in her seat, nudging a lightly-dozing Elina from her shoulder; she wakes slowly and silently, stifling her yawn in her palm, and at Hawke's gesture she shifts to listen as well.

Another wagon. A new one, with a different creak to it, new voices speaking low and hushed over the sounds of stamping horses. Hawke presses closer to the gap in the canvas, ready and beyond eager, every breath shorter than the one before it. Only minutes, now. Only minutes, and then—

There are two new guards with the new prisoners. They drive another covered wagon like this one, the same light sand-colored canvas draped over the bed; the taller one, a woman, carries two daggers at her hip, and the shorter man a broad maul over one shoulder. Neither moves with the practice of a seasoned warrior, even when George crosses to meet them with outstretched hand. The river stretches beside them to their left, lazy and grey as the low-hung sky; to the right the hills roll away gently into the distance, like waves from the sea, never cresting.

It is a good day for battle.

"Quiet?" George asks, not quite low enough to keep from carrying.

"Enough," says the woman, rolling her shoulders to loosen them. "No trouble from the lot of 'em, anyway."

"A good group, then."

"Mm. Six all told, mostly field-strong. One or two handsome ones in the lot, though."

"Good. We'll water them all and rest the horses a quarter-hour, and then let's move. Mine have given me enough trouble for three."

"Ser," she says with a saucy grin. "Just as you say."

George shakes his head, already wheeling back to Hawke's wagon. A curt gesture at Walter and he is clambering from the driver's seat to move to the horses' heads with water and feedbags, hand on their bridles to hold them still; then George is at the wagon's flap-cover, lifting it, beckoning them out into the day.

The last time. This will be the last time.

Every nerve is humming by the time Hawke steps from shadow into cloud-light, Elina tense and wary at her side, Simon glancing at them both from the second wagon, the small boy clutching at his sweat-stained tunic. He holds her eyes, then looks deliberately at the children—Hawke nods, relief shooting hot up her spine, and looks to Darren three or four places ahead. Young Darren, with the dark hair and black eyes, fierce and proud; the silent young woman at his side with equal resolve, the others watching, the others waiting, too. Even the prisoners from the other wagon seem to sense the lightning hum of power in the air, tense glances at each other and at the wagons and at Hawke. All hale enough, and fit enough to fight, and if she can safely assume that none of them would prefer abject slavery and the bite of a whip, then it is only a matter of time.

Three minutes. Four. She will go for the woman with the daggers first and then her friend, to remove the unknown threats. George and Leonard she knows; Walter is no danger. George curses, turning away, moving to the wagon for some forgotten tool. Walter is alone at the horses' heads; Leonard is at the head of the water-line with the woman, her companion tending to their own horses.

Hawke is the last. She moves forward, step by step, her heart thundering like a sea-storm. Three before her. Then only Elina. Then—

Then—

"Hands," says the woman with the daggers. Hawke lifts them, palms up as best she can, and a ladleful of clear rainwater streams into Hawke's fingers.

How long has the fire been waiting in her blood? Long enough that there is nothing of quiescence in it, long enough that it seethes when she calls for it, a rolling churning stream as bright as silver through glass. At first there is only a thin curl of faint white smoke at the base of her thumbs; then it broadens, and thickens, and by the time the woman recoils with a shout Hawke's hands are aflame from the bones of her wrists to her fingertips, the water gone to steam, a blaze simmering so long beneath the brush that nothing can stop it again in open air.

Nineteen _days._

The woman stands no chance. Hawke had known it from the first leap of magic in her heart; she looses the fire all at once in a brilliant burst of heat and light as broad as the wagon itself, the woman's scream no match to its deafening roar. She falls in seconds, burnt, eyes open and unseeing; before another beat has passed Hawke is already at her waist, yanking the daggers free, slicing through the rope around Elina's outstretched hands and thrusting their hilts towards her in the same motion.

A shout behind her. Leonard, thick and square and barreling towards her, shortsword bared and glinting white—Hawke lifts both hands above her head, braced against the immense pressure that bears down on her from the ice she yanks out of the sky. Elina is already gone, daggers whirling around her hands, to the head of the new wagon where the newcomer struggles to free his maul from his back—a clenched gesture and—

Ice spears out of the earth at Hawke's feet like frost-flowers, sudden and piercing as steel. Two sprays catch Leonard in the arm, in the thigh; he cries out and recoils, as if there is escape from Hawke, here, as if there is anywhere to run between the low hills rolling by the river. Fire still licks at her back, undiminished by death, and when she puts her fingers to her forehead Leonard snarls through a face gone pale with fear. His sword rises between them—

—and flashes away into the dirt. The blast of force continues undaunted, lifting him, thrusting him backwards and away from the shouting prisoners. He bounces against the earth oddly, his back twisting with the blow, no sound but a low sigh. He does not move again.

Hawke spins, breathing hard, long enough to see Elina battling with the new slaver, blood on her face and his, his maul with the greater reach but Elina quick enough to evade it. And Simon halfway through the prisoners already, all three children at his hip as he goes slave to slave and wrist to wrist. Simon, who is good with knots and ropework—

"Bitch!" Walter's voice. _Walter's_ voice, raised as she has never heard it, such anger in his face that she can barely recognize it. "George! George!"

A single breath as she calls magic, and then a cry sharp enough to pierce the sky— "Behind you!"

The silent girl, young, slender, her hands cupped desperately around her mouth—

Then only the slender gasp of an edged blade passing too close as Hawke throws herself forward to her knees in the dirt. She rolls to the side, arms over her face—and George stands above her, sword raised, face twisted in fury.

"It takes a lot to get me mad," he says. Hawke scuttles backwards a foot, then two; George follows, overturning the forgotten water-barrel with a rough gesture, the dregs spilling out with a streaming rush into the grass. "You killed Lennie and you've cost a dozen times what you're worth. I don't get mad easy, girl."

"First time for everything," Hawke says breathlessly, and flings a handful of fire towards his eyes bright enough to blind a bull. He staggers and Hawke rolls to her feet, all her weight forward on her toes as she darts away from him into the open clearing, ice cracking off her boots at every step—

—ice that grows ever thicker—

It is a shock, when she turns, more stunning than any since her flight from Kirkwall. For several seconds she can hardly understand what she sees, as if a hard-enough blink might clear away the sight of Walter, both hands stretched forward, clutching a mage's staff.

The thing is old and inexpertly carved—and even as Hawke stares he drives its tip into the earth before him and a new shower of ice blows upwards from her feet. Hawke recoils, hands thrown over her face, and remembers only at the last instant that George still stands with sword in hand, a blind strike whistling through the air by her shoulder even as she leaps to the side. His off-hand presses hard to watering eyes; Hawke dances backwards, putting both George and Walter in the same line of sight, dipping a mental hand deep into her own reserves until gold fire-drops spill from every fingertip.

Some stick cracks beneath her heel. George spins in place, his unfocused glare of hatred through his fingers more than enough to turn her gut to ice; he digs his booted toes into the ground and then he is _running,_ large and heavy and impossible to stop, and she is too close and he is _so close_ and not even flame will stop him now—

A dagger's hilt blossoms in the center of his chest.

George slows, staggering, listing to one side as he lifts a finger to touch the hilt. He looks and Hawke looks with him, both breathing hard—and it is _Darren_ , young Darren with the dark coarse hair and his hand still outstretched, Elina beside him with the other dagger still clenched in her fist, blood smearing from the slash down her cheek. Simon stands just behind, and the children with him, and the others in a long line, silent, waiting, _ready_ —

George falls to his knees, and then to one elbow. He looks to the huddled shadow across the scorched grass, says, small, "Lennie?" Then his eyes close and he gives a great shudder and then between one moment and the next he settles, quietly, in death.

 _Enough_ , Hawke thinks, and turns to Walter by the wagon. Enough of all of this. It is the end—

"Stay back," Walter says, his voice trembling as she draws nearer, his hands unsteady on the staff, lisp made worse a hundredfold with fear. "I'm telling you to stay away from me."

"You are welcome to surrender," Hawke says. "Put down your staff."

"No! I need it. I've got nothing without it—Father says it's the only useful thing I've got—"

Her jaw clenches. "Grantham is through, Walter. Regardless of what happens here he won't ever sell another slave. You can die here, or you can go to prison with him and live." She spreads her arm behind her: four bodies, the prisoners untouched, the grass smoking black and frosted white in long streaks and patches between the green. "Your choice."

Walter flinches back. "Choice!" he snarls, wounded animal clawing at its tormentor. "When have I ever had a _choice?_ Ever since I can remember it's been 'we'll keep the templars off if you're _good_ , Walt,' and 'we can only protect you if you _work_ for us, Walt,' and I won't—I _won't—_ I swear I'll die before—!"

Before what, she doesn't know. Walter twists in place, a high sizzling crackle of air heralding the lightning he brings, pointing not at Hawke but at the _children—_

She does not need a staff for this.

Force, first, to whip the unfinished wood from his hands. Easy enough to catch the recoil, the press of unfocused magic exploding outwards in electric light; then fire, as known to her as her name, as the beat of her heart, great rolling flames at her back and before her feet to char the earth and set the air between them quivering. Then force again in a steady stream, pinning Walter against the wagon's side, his arms outstretched, the wagon shaking with magic, with the stamping and whinnying of frightened horses.

She can smell rain—

"Surrender," she says again, in hope and not command. Every step brings her closer—every breath comes tighter than the last, Walter sneering, head turned away as if she burns too bright for direct gaze.

"Kill me," he breathes. "Because if you don't, I _swear_ I'll spend the rest of my life hunting them down. I'll go to my father's contacts in Tevinter—I'll start something new on my own, I'll do whatever I have to—until I've killed you, _slave—"_

So much fear, and more hatred than she can bear—she hesitates and the force breaks only an instant and he _moves,_ leaping for her, his hands outstretched for her throat.

Instinct carries her forward. Ice bristles at her fingertips in a brilliant burst of cold light as she reaches, as she slams the palm of one hand flat against his heart—

The spear is nearly four feet long by the time Hawke lets it die. A razor's tip, and the haft's ice polished like clear glass—and Walter, suspended in air by the widest part of the base, by the wooden shell of the wagon he is pinned to. His head lolls slack, faint surprise in a face made younger by death. Hawke blows out a rough gasp, and then a second, furious and hurt and already sore with regret, but there is no time for anything half so selfish and she turns, shoving her hair from her eyes, stalking forward into the clearer cleaner air of the wind-swept hills, of the river that still waits at their side. The burn of ice fades from her hand; the searing cracks of open flame go dim.

There. Victory.

The slaves are silent for a long time. Hawke does not know what to say, what consolation she can offer; she has led the slaughter of five people and risked the lives of near twenty innocents to do so, and even if her intentions had been good she does not know if this is _enough_. Then—

Then, Elina steps forward into the empty space between them, slowly at first and then faster, the knife dropping from her hand to forgotten earth as she breaks into a run, as she wraps both arms around Hawke's neck and lets loose a burst of laughter so delighted Hawke can hardly believe it. But that is enough for the first breaking; there is more laughter after, nervous and weary and overjoyed, the prisoners mingling with each other, exchanging greetings and mending the small bruises and aches left by days of hard travel and harder meals. The three children cling to Simon like moss to stone, even when he comes to Hawke and Elina at the end, even when Hawke's outstretched hand makes them flinch away.

"My thanks," he says quietly, still holding the hand of the young boy. "I… did not expect this."

"Victory?" Hawke says, and gestures at his company. "Or the little shadows?"

"Either. I will tell you: my wife died in Hercinia. A fever. After, I drank…" he lifts one shoulder in a shrug, glances down at the upturned faces beside him. "Now I will find something else."

Hawke smiles, her heart hurting. "Of course."

"So?" Elina says, weight shifting from foot to foot, her face alight. "So? What now?"

Hawke stretches both hands above her head and closes her eyes to the grey-clouded sky, breathing in the winds the river carries and the harder scent of burnt grass, filling every part of her with the deep, satisfied ache of all her swallowed magic uncaged and unleashed at last. They will have to burn the bodies. They will have to calm the horses, and find food, and Hawke will have a bath if she must force Elina to throw her into the river, but first—

"Now," Hawke says, laughing, giddy, "we go _home_."

—

Of the nineteen slaves that now stand freed, eleven are from Hercinia: Simon, the silent girl, three of the others from Hawke's group, and all six of the new additions from the woman with the daggers. By their accounts and Hawke's best reckoning, they are about a day from Hercinia; Elina draws a rough map of the area in a smoothed patch of dirt and together they work out a course that will take them home, a wide circle that begins east at Hercinia and loops south, along the coast through Ostwick and the small villages along the way, then up again through the Vimmarks to Markham. Nine days, Elina guesses. Ten, perhaps, with the stops they will need to make for food and water.

Twenty days already since the Gallows—

But Hawke cannot think of that now. Instead she nods and stands and dusts herself off, and when the dead have been burned and the last cuts and bruises have been mended from the harsh trip northward she takes a brief— _glorious —_ dunk in the river, and, still dripping, collects Walter's staff and climbs aboard the driver's bench of the wagon of which she has been so recently resident. Elina finishes dismantling the covers with the others, opening the beds to wind-clean air; then she swings up beside Hawke and Darren takes the second and one of the women she doesn't know from the newer group the last, and with a twitch of the reins ("Like Papa's mules," she tells Elina, and laughs at her expression), they are on the trade roads again, eastward-bound.

_A little longer, Fenris. Only a little longer._

In truth, Hawke remembers very little of the journey. She remembers soft but steady laughter the first few days, the overwhelming lightness of heart pervading all but the sternest faces; she remembers night after night of fireside cheer despite the meager fare of whatever they could catch; she remembers swearing a blue storm on the fourth day when a wagon-wheel breaks not half an hour out from the far side of Hercinia. Elina shakes her head, smiling, and sends Darren back to the city to find Simon in the small, well-kept home Hawke had somehow not expected, where the three street children had gripped Simon's hands and decided to stay. Two days' delay and a favor from relieved friends at a nearby tradehouse and they are on the road again with a fresh wheel and fresh horses, south-southwest, Ostwick still two days away at _best_ and Hawke is—just—

They stop only once, for Hawke to make her way into trees she has not seen in twenty days. She'd left her markings deep enough to weather longer; in less than an hour she has found the fallen, hollowed oak with the great grey stone beside it, has lifted off the cover of rocks and woven reeds to pull free the oiled rucksack hidden deep in its protection.

Shartan lives. And her mother's letters, and the ridiculous furred hood, and the fat sack of emergency coin saved for this purpose. Even her armor is better than expected, wanting only cleaning, and Hawke wraps it carefully in spare scraps of canvas from the wagons before strapping it to her bag. She cannot keep from touching the book at every stop, of opening its pages to words she still remembers Fenris stumbling over, to memories of her study on quiet evenings, candlelight softening his edges, his low voice rumbling through page after page after page.

It's not the company, she tells Elina, the third night the woman has caught her pacing the edges of the camp, her arms crossed over her chest, her face turned north like a lodestar has pulled her. It's not that she minds helping, either, because she _doesn't_ ; it's only that…

She doesn't know how to say it. She falters into silence, gazes north again, yearning beyond words for something still so far from her reach.

"You're looking for someone," Elina says quietly.

Hawke means to deny it. Even now that secret is still too close to her heart, tender as a bone-deep bruise, easier to hide than heal. Then her mouth opens, and she says, "I—" and in the space between one sound and the next a sudden crush of longing swells in her like a summer storm, rising fast and hot and tight in her throat, lodging there, burning with every swallow. "I—" she tries again, low and strangled, and then to her horror her lips twist and her eyes clench shut and even through the hand she presses to her mouth she can hear her own sobbing breaths, tears streaking down her cheeks hot enough to scald.

" _Flames_ ," she gasps, half-laughing through the grief like thorns in her chest, reaching blindly for Elina's shadow. "Get me out of here—get me—they can't— _see_ this—" and Elina's hand is on her arm and on her back and she is guiding her away, into the low sparse trees that line this section of coastal road, where no one will hear her but Andraste.

There—bark beneath her hands, rough and solid and cool. Hawke grips it without seeing, clutching it like an anchor, face buried in her other hand.

She misses Fenris. The Gallows had been burning, and Kirkwall is in shambles and she nearly _killed_ Anders—and she misses Fenris.

How long has it been? Twenty-five days now, near a full month of running and fighting and blazing moment to moment like a forest struck by lightning, never stopping, never resting, sweeping away all before her without care. Twenty-five days since the Gallows burned and Meredith turned to char in its ruined courtyard, since Hawke was chased hand and heart from the city she'd grown to call _home;_ twenty-five days since she's slept in a real bed, since she's had a bath in anything other than a cold cracked tub or a colder river, since she held that damned elf in her arms and knew even the _slightest_ moment of honest peace—

She is burning out at last.

She doesn't know how long she cries. Long enough that her chest hurts and her head _aches_ , long enough that her eyes are tight and swollen and her cheeks hot to the touch. Elina still stands—somewhere nearby, guarding her against prying eyes who would not thank their erstwhile guide for breaking apart so near the end.

She doesn't want to be their guide, not in this moment. She wants to be where Fenris is, to feel him breathe the same air, and she _can't_. She can't, no matter what she wishes, and she is tired of inevitability and tired of denial and no matter the cause it kills her to know that he lives and walks somewhere beyond her reach, kept there only by chance encounter and her own accursed sense of duty.

Eventually, when she can breathe again through the hiccuping sighs, when the flood has passed without her drowning, Hawke turns and sinks against the tree-trunk she has chosen as ballast. Even with her arm over her upturned face she can sense Elina drawing nearer, bending over her, can feel the outreached hand hesitating over her shoulder a long moment before dropping to touch it gently at last.

"I'm sorry," Elina says softly, genuine emotion in her voice, and something else trembling behind it, barer, more frail. "Your lover?"

"Yes," Hawke breathes, a sigh like a rising wind, the admission lifting every dead-leaf weight she has buried herself beneath for too long. "I miss him. I haven't seen him since—I don't even know if he's _alive_ , and I've been here for..." She gulps for air, feels her stomach clench with the effort to keep back the sudden sob. "I miss him. I'm sorry, I can't—I _miss_ him."

Elina nods, short and determined, and when Hawke wipes the heels of her eyes with her hand she sinks to her knees in the earthy loam at Hawke's side, her forehead dropping to Hawke's shoulder, her arms coming around her in an embrace.

Hawke cries again at that, but only a little, and when it is over they both stand, slightly embarrassed, and Hawke picks the twigs from Elina's braid and Elina wipes the smear of dirt from Hawke's cheek, and they go together again into the light of the camp that waits for them.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks for this chapter go to w0rdinista, swaps55, barbex, and msdirected (all on Tumblr) for their invaluable knowledge and advice regarding horses. I've almost certainly still managed to stray anyway, but they did their level best to set me in the right direction. Thanks, ladies. Y'all are wonderful.

" . . . tell Wind and Fire where to stop," returned madame; "but don't tell me."

— _A Tale of Two Cities_ , Charles Dickens

—

Elina does not mention that night again. Even as they come wearily to Ostwick there is a new quiet between them, as if she understands too well; Hawke has enough suspicions and enough sense to keep them to herself, and when they rein the last wagon before the inn at the city's edge she disembarks behind Elina without a word.

Only Elina, and Darren, and the silent girl left. Only three, of all that left Southfort together in chains.

Darren leaves first, a bright smile on his boyish face, the pilfered dagger spinning around one finger. The silent girl follows shortly after a quick embrace with Hawke, her steps unerring, pointing west, to the brother waiting there for her. And Elina…

And Elina, of the auburn braid and the sharp tongue, who wears something of a wry smile as Hawke follows her to the small, square building set just outside the square, down the long hall and up the narrow, steep stairs, to the room where an old woman has been waiting with two months' undaunted hope for any word of her daughter.

Elina knocks. The door opens—

A sharp breath. A table rattling as it is clutched for support, an inkwell overturning with a ceramic clink—and then nothing but joy, as Elina steps into the arms of her weeping mother, her own shoulders shaking, smiling bright enough to break the day.

Hawke grins. Steps back, away—but before she can vanish Elina tears away from her mother and comes to her again, kisses her roughly on the cheek. "Thank you," she says, holding Hawke's gaze, her voice low and hoarse. "For everything. I—I can't thank you enough."

"Your mother asked," Hawke tells her, her lips quirking. "I could hardly say no."

Elina lifts her head, fierce and proud. "I won't forget."

"Neither will I," Hawke says, and grips her hands. "And—for what it's worth, my real name. It's Hawke. If you ever need to reach me again."

"Hawke. Thank you."

Her mother moves, a sudden, too-quick gesture, her tears drying, her elegant brow furrowed. " _Hawke_?"

"Yes," she says, abruptly uneasy.

Then it comes, inevitable as stone falling to earth: "You're the Champion of Kirkwall."

Hawke closes her eyes, opens them again. Elina has stepped away, her tanned face gone pale; she lifts one hand to her mouth, then knots it at the base of her throat. "It's a lie."

"It's not. I was separated from my companions just after the last battle the night Kirkwall fell. I've been trying—" _trying so_ hard _, Fenris, so please, wait a little longer—_ "to reach them ever since."

"And then you found us."

Hawke spreads her hands. "I could hardly let something like that pass."

"You don't understand," her mother says, aged hands lifting palm-up between them. She steps forward, her eyes hard as they lift to Hawke's. "They're saying you're dead, Champion."

Hawke's heart— _stops._ Like a lightning bolt cracking a summer-blue sky, arresting all thought in the thunder of its passing. Her mouth works without voice, her chest hollowed out by horror; at last she manages, "What?"

"You're dead. You died near twenty days ago, falling off a cliff near Ostwick to save a man against wild dogs." Hawke makes a harsh, animal noise in her throat at that— _Roald,_ she thinks, stunned by rage, and Elina's mother continues. "He claimed the bounty in Kirkwall. The Knight-Captain gave him coin and ordered his men to tear down the broadsheets with your face. Rumor has it he said there was no more point in looking—"

" _What?_ "

"It's been all anyone's talked of for two weeks. I'm— _sorry_ , Champion."

She cannot think clearly. She spins in place, her fist against her mouth— _dead,_ dead for twenty damned days while she wandered in the northern hills without a word to anyone in the world. Every civilized city talking of her passing, spreading the word fast as wildfire, believing it to be—

"Blood of the Maker," she says to no one. Her voice is loud in the tiny room, made flat and distant by the hot pounding of her own blood in her ears. " _Fenris_."

Elina says, "Oh—"

And then Hawke is running, running, blind for fury and grief alike, Walter's staff in her hand, Elina's mother pressing some small packet of food into her arms, Elina tying a skin of water to Hawke's beaten, nicked belt. A scream is building somewhere deep inside her, tangled in the grief-sharp barbs that still line her ribs, fed firelike with frustration and guilt and the damned aching of _thirty days,_ thirty days without him _here_ , with him thinking, him believing of all things that she should dare to break such an oath to him _now_ , now that everything has finished at last, now that they have a chance!

Hawke swears. Swears again at the bright brilliant blue of Ostwick's sky, at the soughing sea at her back, every wave a mark of another second lost and wasted. The wagon's horses are sturdy enough but she has no skill and little seat left from her childhood on Lothering's farms, not after ten years in Kirkwall—in a handful of minutes she has the stronger free and following after, the streets a sun-soaked blur as Elina's mother guides her to the stables. Fire in her fingers and a pair of sovereigns—and no questions asked as the startled stablehands saddle her horse, as they tie her pack behind it, as Hawke ungracefully mounts and takes the reins in hand. She can barely string two thoughts together through the rage.

It sidles sideways, stamps nervously. She slides her palms alongside its neck and calls for rejuvenation, for fresh energy and vigor; it stamps again, tossing its head, and without a second thought Hawke urges it forward into the open street. It trots forward briskly, as if it knows the desperation that drives her; she twines one hand into the horse's mane, praying for instinct to guide it where she can't—and if Andraste has any compassion for the mortals still yet singing Hawke prays that she hears her, now if no other time—

Elina's farewell call rings clear into the air behind her. Then the gates to the city's outer walls—and there the road ahead, wide and straight and carrying her north, arrow-true, unerring, to the city where Fenris waits with all that is left of her heart.

—

And yet, for all the magic still simmering in her skin, there is only so long either she or the horse can go a day. The traders on the road do not question her and she does not look to them, not for news or recognition or what sweet-smelling meals they cook on their campfires. They can have no reports she cares to hear, anyway.

The first day passes with little more incident than the rattling of her teeth at the horse's wagon-rough gait, than the stiff-legged fall the first time she tries to dismount with her knees like rubber and her thighs afire with pain. The second, dragging herself back into the saddle with enormous reluctance on both her part and the horse's, skirting Markham to the south no matter how much she wishes to rest. She grows used to the cool rush of healing against the throbbing in her legs, in her lower back. The horse no longer shies at the touch of magic to its neck, willing to endure much for her last, withered apples, for the whispered promises of both their homes. Had she thought of it she would have changed for a fresher horse in Ostwick, but after two weeks this gelding knows her now, and no longer sidles away at her magic, and for better or worse they are bound together, footsore and aching, for this last leg of their journey's circle.

She stops when she must, when hunger pulls at her and her horse both and their heads turn at every sound of a distant creek, when her legs burn hip to heel and the horse's withers fleck with froth. At night they rest well away from the roads, in the shadow of low trees and with no fire to give away their presence. The horse is patient through all of it, despite Hawke's certainty that it would prefer more skill at its mouth and the straps of its girth besides what habits she remembers from childhood, but she cannot— _wait—_

The third morning she bathes again in a clear creekbed, stripped naked and shivering with the chill, scrubbing sweat and dirt and the last vestiges of battle from her horse and herself alike. She wrings what stains she can from her tunic and trousers, abused near past saving, but they are better than they were when she yanks them over her head again, when she ties her hair away from her face and squares her shoulders against the pain to mount. And then—

And _then—_

At twilight of the third day, when her horse has begun to droop with exhaustion and Hawke herself has little strength left to her, when the first glimpse of evening stars has begun to filter through the leaves that stretch above the road, her horse's ears prick forward and its head lifts in sudden attention. Hawke shifts with it, wearily pushing her hair from her eyes, and tries to ignore the ache of every muscle below her shoulders. She'll count herself lucky if she doesn't have to crawl into her bed tonight.

There is a light. There is—a _light._

Southfort.

She's done it. She's _here_ , at last, a thousand years of waiting in the last three days, and she is—

She is riding towards Southfort on an exhausted horse stolen from its warden-led slavers, no word but her own against the guard and the man who commands them. It does not matter that the chance of its recognition will be near nothing with no wagon of slaves behind it—but _near_ is not _none._ Hawke sucks in a breath, closing her eyes, torn between her wild urge to gallop heedlessly into the city and damn the consequences, and the last lingering voice of sense in her head that demands she delay a moment longer for her own sake—and for Fenris's.

At the last thin edge of trees Hawke dismounts, fingers clumsy with fatigue on the horse's saddle, his cloth and stirrups, ignoring the inquisitive nicker at this abandonment. She has little hope of hiding it in the brush so near the city, and neither does she wish to risk a fire so late at night; instead she puts her thumb to the places in the leather that are stamped with the Ostwick stable's brand, charring them black until no mark is left to trace. Then she shoves them, saddle, girth and all, into the crook of an old leaning oak, its gnarled roots twisted high enough from the earth to hide them from at least a cursory glance.

The horse nickers again. She strokes its forelock, touches it with her last palmful of rejuvenation until it gives a sudden shiver of fleeting energy; then she walks it with nothing but bridle along the road towards the Southfort lights until its ears prick again, until it begins to trot forward without her guidance, until instinct takes over where her hand does not and he turns his head towards his home. His tail flicks as they broach the city's outermost buildings together, not a soul in sight to raise alarm as the street curves to the right, to the hill she knows leads to the prison Grantham still holds—and he is still alive, and Hawke—

Hawke drags in a breath, and then two, her hands cold with sweat on the reins. Her pack hangs heavy on her back, the memory of Fenris's book a sharp corner to cut on, and if he is not here after all of this she will—she will not—

Enough. Enough. There is no more time for doubt—there is no more time to _wait_ , not anymore, and Hawke lifts her head.

_I'm coming, Fenris_.

It is so _hard_ to keep to the shadows, to watch for faces who might know her in the few townsfolk she passes in the streets. None glances at her a second time, nor stops her travels despite the horse that walks with her; and then the Silver Lion rises in the distance and every nerve in her body leaps to run this last little distance, such a paltry stretch of road in this tiny town she has been trying to reach for so long _._ Its windows are lit brightly with lantern and candle, its double doors thrown open to the cool night air and a noisy-enough crowd indoors tonight that Hawke can hear them even across the streets.

A tiny stable backs to the inn, clearly empty even from this little distance, and Hawke turns the horse's head towards it. At this hour the hostler is almost certain to be at supper, though he means to make a swift return if the half-empty wine bottle in the window is any indication, and Hawke quickens her pace.

A growl, low and menacing, falters her steps. A sudden surge of blind fury lodges in her throat but she will not be stopped, not now, not for _anything_ , hurrying onwards even as the growl grows louder—and then a mabari steps out of the shadows of the stable, and Hawke's breath freezes in her chest.

She says, barely a breath, "Toby?"

The growl cuts off like a light has been put out. Her dog is— _here_. Her _dog_ is—

Hawke is on her knees in the street. Toby is still fifteen feet away, hackles high as a Chantry belltower, his stance defensive and she thinks— _afraid_ , and when she stretches out her hands to him they are trembling, and her voice trembles when she says again, "Hello, pup. I—I'm here, I've come back—"

He cocks his head. His body shifts, forward and back again, as if he cannot decide which truth to believe; Hawke stands and moves closer, the horse following her sedately out of the lit streets and the threat of passersby, but Toby does not move, eyes wholly fixed on her every step. She stretches out her hands, palm up, and his great dear head bends towards them—

She had expected barking, had expected too the frantic joyful circling around her legs she has always known from him after her returns from long journeys. But he does neither of these things; instead he licks her fingers, once, and then as if his paws have grown weak he lies down on his belly at her feet, high, quick whines cutting through the night, quiet and piercing as the keen edge of a blade to her heart.

Hawke falls beside him in the shadows of the stable, wrapping him in her arms as best she can, speechless with sorrow and grief, easing his head into her lap when he lifts it. "You lump," she whispers when she can, when she is certain no tears will choke away her voice and leave her mute. "Didn't you trust me to come back?"

He whines again, pushes his head against her knee. She kisses his folded ear, the tip of his nose, the rough fur of his neck where his collar rests; she strokes his sides over the steady thumping beat of his heart, resolute and unchanging from her every memory of it, reminding her of how _long_ it has been since she stood on the tip of an outreaching pier with the winds behind her black with smoke and not with stars, the Gallows burning, Fenris dazed and lost even as Carver guided him away. Toby had been such a comfort, unflinching loyalty impossible to measure, and she has—

She has missed him.

Hawke tells him so, soft whispers, bearing with a smile the broad lick he swipes up her chin in answer, and every passing minute bleeds strength into his legs again. By the time twilight has ended in truth he is standing, all his weight against her chest, his head tucked under her chin; by the time he has mastered himself enough to wag his stumped tail in the excitement she'd expected her knees have begun to ache from how long she has knelt beside him.

She doesn't want to ask. She doesn't want to know the answer, can't bear it if—

"Toby," she says, her hands going still behind his ears. "Is—Is Fenris here with you?"

There is a long, pointed silence, and then a huff of hot dog breath against her collarbone. Toby looks at her reprovingly, his tongue lolling; but it is no _answer_ , and she fists one hand against the hay-strewn stone of the stable's shadowy stoop. "Please," she says, and her voice breaks.

The dog gives a great shake, as if shedding something heavy he has worn for too long. Then he turns, looks up towards a dark corner-room on the second floor, then down again to the open doors of the tavern, where even now another two Southfort citizens duck into the pleasant chaos. He looks back, head tilted, and licks her chin again; she doesn't even feel it this time, locked to the warm spill of light and sound. Fenris is here. He is—

Her fingers have clenched into Toby's ruff. She says, "Will you wait? I don't—I've got to—please, if you can bear it."

Toby huffs again, nosing under her free hand; when she slides her fingers against his muzzle he blinks, holding her in place with that familiar intelligent gaze she has not seen for so long. Then he backs away into the darkness of the stable, and even as she watches he pads to a corner well-cushioned with hay, and turns three tight circles, and lies down with a heavy sigh. A narrow, horned head rises briefly from the gloom behind him and Hawke's heart leaps to her throat; then she laughs, stifling the sound in her hand as she pushes gingerly through the muscle-deep hurt of her thighs to her aching feet.

"You've made a friend," she says softly, as the goat resettles in sleep. "Me, too," she adds, looking for—

She has forgotten the horse.

But her quick spike of alarm dies as quickly as it comes, because without her prompting it has walked into the stable behind her, settled in the last open stall, and already gone to knee to sleep. "Andraste bless you," she murmurs, meaning it, and spares a precious moment to ensure the grain is good and water is plentiful. All she can do, now.

Toby cracks one eye at her, then glances meaningfully at the tavern still waiting across the street. Hawke turns, her pulse beginning to pound once more; she says, breathless, "I'll be back," and then she is in the street and past it, torchlight streaming over her feet, her hands, catching in the hollow of her throat to flush her skin with heat. All this time, everything that has passed, Kirkwall and Ostwick and Roald's dogs and sweating beneath the thin canvas of a too-crowded wagonbed, George's death and the death of the man whose staff she still grips like steel, Simon and the children and _Elina_ and the book still hanging low on her back—

She is here. Thirty-three days, and after _everything_ , she is here.

Hawke draws in a breath, blows it out again, and steps into the Silver Lion.


	12. Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tomorrow is my birthday, and as sort of a hobbit-y reverse present, I thought I'd put this chapter up a day early. In addition, I have been dying to reveal since the first chapter that this Silver Lion is indeed the inn featured in my shortfic "[A Conversation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/626996)," posted in January of 2013. Readers of both fics may have suspected its involvement from the first, and I'm happy to be able to report at last that they are one and the same. Those interested in another perspective of the following events may enjoy it as well, even if the timeline is somewhat muddled due to its being written, oh, a year and a half ago.
> 
> Recommended listening: [Love So Alike](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPGl0Byp67E) and [Back From the Dead](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1JRCU54_VA), both from the Tristan & Isolde OST. I'm sure the titles are entirely coincidental.
> 
> Enjoy.

I am wild, I will sing to the trees,  
I will sing to the stars in the sky,  
I love, I am loved, he is mine,  
Now at last I can die!

I am sandaled with wind and with flame,  
I have heart-fire and singing to give,  
I can tread on the grass or the stars,  
Now at last I can live!  
— _Joy_ , Sara Teasdale

—

A woman walks into the Silver Lion.

She is tall, with dark hair pulled back low on her neck, her leathers weather-stained and traveled hard, an inexpertly-carved walking staff in one hand and an overladen pack on one shoulder; in her face there is an old, bruised weariness that runs deep as bone. Her eyes rove the room as she approaches the bar where the inn's proprietor stands with empty tankard in hand, flicking face to face without landing, and when she sits at last at the counter her back bends under some heavy weight he cannot see. Her boots are six inches discolored with mud and earth.

She does not linger overlong. The proprietor offers her brief words, glancing once at the back corner where he sits, his wine untouched at his elbow, his plate long emptied. The room is far too crowded; every few seconds another broad trader steps between them and robs him of the sight, or a serving girl crosses with a tray of steaming food, or the woman leans forward to speak to the innkeeper so that he cannot see her.

He cannot hear what she is saying. Cannot read her lips, either, not when her back is turned to him, not even with the perfect memory he has of every twist of them, every smile, every press of them against his own in the dark of another room in another city a lifetime's ride from this place.

She stands—

He is on his feet. He does not know how, does not remember pushing away from the table; he could not step forward if he wished to with the high hard beating of his heart in his ears to deafen him, held glyphlike to the worn wooden boards beneath his feet. She stands, and she turns—

She sees him. She moves towards him through the crowd, pausing only once to speak to some serving girl in grey and green. She gestures at him across the room, then lets the girl go again as she follows her own sweeping hand through the roaming traders and their friends too drunk to stand properly. She is ten feet away and she looks so _tired,_ and then four feet, two—

"Hello, stranger," she says, her voice, her voice, her _voice_. "Mind if I share your table?"

His knees are gone beneath him. He grips the table to know that it is real as much for the support of it, because if the table is real then the room is real, and this is not a dream and she is not—

Her name is nothing more than a sigh. A breath of nothing, gone again before it lives. He says it again, stronger, and her eyes close; then a third time he says, " _Hawke_ ," and she looks at him and there is a light in her face at once brighter and more real than any torch, a keeping of a promise and an undying hope and a terrible, overwhelming joy like nothing else he has ever seen, like coming _home_.

"Fenris," she says.

He staggers.

Hawke reaches quick as an arrow beneath his elbow, a support that nearly undoes the rest of him, because her hand is warm and alive and she is—holding him—saying—

"What?" he asks, hoarse beyond words, unable to understand.

"Your room. Which way?"

Fenris shows her. Or she leads him, or they follow each other—but somehow they are in the hallway and her feet strike the stairs alongside his feet and he can feel, he can feel her warmth, can feel her fingers against his arm. He cannot hold all of this. He is too small—

"Here," says Hawke, and then they are in his well-appointed room with the wide bed and the chair by the window's desk, her pack dropping to the rug, her staff leant against the wall where his cloak hangs. The candles light themselves one by one as Hawke—as _Hawke_ touches her fingers to them, and she turns to him in their yellow-soft glow and her eyes are the same as he remembers and her hands are the same as she remembers, and she—smiles—

His hand slips on the bed's rounded post. He reaches for it again—and then like a slide of earth from a cliffside he is on his knees, given out at last, his chest heaving from how tightly his breath comes in his throat, his eyes clenched shut against himself. He cannot command the lyrium; it flashes silver-blue through his closed lids, rippling heat up and down his arms as he tries to swallow, to stand, to master this masterless crush of grief and gladness and overwhelming relief too vast for the word.

"Fenris," Hawke says, and he shudders; then her hands are on his shoulders and he shudders again, reaching for a truth he can hardly bear. Her knees thump softly to the rug beside him and his hand closes blindly over her hand, her bare upper arm, around her waist, and then he has his arms around her and her grip has clenched into the back of his shirt like a ship mooring after sailing an endless sea, as if she cannot abide the thought of ever letting go again. As if he cannot—

Hawke.

_Here_. In his arms, crushed against him so tightly he can hardly breathe, her shoulders trembling, the muscles of her back shifting under his hands with every movement, her hair coming free from its tie already with every stroke of his fingers down the length of it. He is saying something, he realizes, words spilling from him in a torrent of trade tongue and Arcanum and what little else he knows, because no single language could possibly have the words for what he can barely understand himself, can possibly convey what he has waited thirty-three days to tell her.

She is _crying_. He can feel the hot tears soaking into his collar, her cheeks sliding damp across his own cheek. Or maybe they are his own; he can't tell. He could watch the whole of Thedas burn around him if it meant he did not have to leave this moment again.

"Hawke," he says, low and rough and tender, and she shakes her head, clutches him closer. He says it again, and again, running his fingers through her hair long loose, down the bent lines of her back, smoothing his palms to the curve of her cheek when he can, when she will let him between the tears and her own uneven murmurs. Sometimes it is his name, and sometimes apologies, half-explanations he can hardly understand and cares about even less, not when all that matters is her face tucked into the crook of his neck.

How long? Thirty-three days, a thousand years, a scant handful of seconds.

Fenris cups her face in both hands. Her eyes lift to his, swollen and brilliant, and her fingers wrap around his wrist where the red band rests, where their first promise began.

Fenris kisses her.

This is not the kiss from the Gallows, when he thought death as likely an outcome as any, when there was nothing but his own certainty that if they should die Hawke ought to know the truth from his own mouth. _Promise me you won't_ …

There is _nothing_ of death in this.

Only a second's hesitation breaks between them, the space of thirty-three days of fear vanishing into smoke, and then her arms are around his neck and her mouth is on his just as fiercely. Her eyes flick to his again and again through her lashes, as he drags in a ragged breath through his nose and her lips part and his heart hammers hard enough to break.

He closes his eyes. The world is too bright; Hawke is too bright; he will tear apart from any more than this. Her hands tangle into his hair and he tightens his grip, seizing her even closer as she tips her head for a better match; she sighs again and there is no space even for that little breath between them. _Good_ , he thinks, dazed with something too great for gladness and too grave for joy. Let there be nothing else.

He had not known his soul so _starved_. Every brush of her familiar fingers is a balm on a cracking callus; every whisper of his name in her voice is a slender shaft of sunlight to a buried man. His _name_ , and he has never loved the sound of it so much as now. How fickle his memory, to tear away half his life and yet leave every line of her face intact. A spur to his sorrow for so long, but _now—_

"Hawke," he gasps against her mouth, and the shiver runs through her hard enough to shake her lips from his. They stare at each other, both breathing hard, and then Hawke's hands come trembling to his jaw, her thumbs moving in long strokes along the bones of his cheeks. Her lips follow, pressing to the tip of his nose. Then his forehead, where the lyrium groups in three points, and then his chin, and the corner of his mouth. Something hot spreads behind his ribs like wings, and for a moment there is nothing he can do but clutch her to his chest.

He does not know how long they kneel on the floor of his borrowed room. He cannot even call it _peace_ , not with the lyrium bursting light with every shift of her skin over his, not with his own lightheaded elation still roiling with the darker stain of sorrow beneath. An hour, and her face presses again to the hollow beneath his ear, her lips on his throat whispering words he can hardly understand; a scarce second and his stomach leaps and settles a hundred times.

She is here. She has come back to him at last.

"Hawke," he says thickly, when he can speak, "you will be the death of me."

She laughs, kisses his throat. "Impossible. I promised the opposite."

"You've always had a short memory for such things."

"Only," she tells him, "with the most excellent of reasons."

He snorts. "I would hear this story."

"And I'll tell you. But first—" and he feels her smile against him, feels her hand smooth over the aching muscles of his back, "first, I've got something to say. Something I've been meaning to remind you of for absolute _ages_."

Fenris lifts his head just enough to see her face. His voice is steadier than he expects; his own smile, when it comes, is truer. "Tell me, Hawke."

"I _love_ you," Hawke says, and kisses him. It is enough.

—

He must help her rise, later, when the euphoria has eased enough that he grows conscious of his bent, stiff knees on the carpet, of Hawke's back beginning to quiver with strain and not emotion. "Three days," she says flatly as he braces her, "on a _horse_ ," and it not until she is steady on her feet that he permits himself the smile.

"You have had your fill of riding, then."

"And so much more." Hawke hisses as he eases her to the side of the still-made bed, her fingers clenching into his upper arms. "I shouldn't have stopped moving."

"It would have happened eventually. That it was here is… fortunate."

"True," she admits with a grin, but the moment is interrupted by a short, polite knock at Fenris's door. Baffling under the circumstances; then Hawke says, startled, "Oh! I'd forgotten about her!"

"About whom?"

"Emma. The serving girl from downstairs. I promised her half a sovereign if she brought a hot supper to your room tonight, and another half if she manages at least two meals tomorrow."

Fenris shakes his head, already turning to the door. "You draw attention to yourself too easily."

"My darling," Hawke drawls from the bedside, "with you around to look so splendidly unapproachable, who'd ever notice me?"

His mouth twists in both amusement and aggravation as he accepts the girl's wide-eyed offering of a covered tray, careful to keep the door between her curiosity and Hawke. "You'll be paid tomorrow," he tells her, brooking no barter, and closes the door again. The tray he carries to the bedside and uncovers, placing its simple contents beside Hawke: corned beef and hot brown bread and a dish of thin-sliced apples in a warm, spiced glaze, and a cracked mug of overboiled tea beside a questionably-washed fork.

"Perfect," Hawke says, and her sigh empties her like a sail.

It is not a hard thing to watch her eat. She takes to the meal like one gone too long without them, enough famishment to make his heart hurt, but there is no shadow in her eyes save that of exhaustion and long travel. Halfway through he reaches without thinking for her hand, for the pulse thumping strong and steady under the soft skin inside her wrist. Her chewing slows; her mug of tea pauses midair.

He says, shocked, "I thought that you were dead."

Her eyes slip shut, and she swallows the last of the bread with the tea's aid before replacing it on the tray. Quietly, she tells the mug, "I was afraid of the same thing, for a little while."

"A trader claimed he saw you fall."

"I left you half-conscious and bleeding from a stomach wound."

"I have survived worse."

"So have I."

Fenris snorts, brushing his fingers carefully over her cheek; then he tucks his foot beneath himself and settles back to let her finish. Even before she manages the last bite her eyelids have begun to droop; when the tray nearly slips unbalanced from her leg he takes it from her, ignoring the moue of disgruntlement at the crumbs' removal. By the time he returns to her side she has already bent over her knees, her head resting on her folded arms, and she does not move save to sigh when he places a careful hand on her shoulder.

"You are tired."

"I told you I shouldn't have stopped moving."

"Hawke. You have been moving for more than a month." She turns her head enough to meet his gaze; he holds it steady. "You are safe here. _Rest_."

She fumbles for his hand. "I'm telling you, Fenris: the moment my head hits that pillow you'll lose me until this time tomorrow."

Lose her? He will have her within his reach for the first time in thirty-three days; he has lost nothing and gained all. He tells her this.

Hawke lets out a long, slow breath. "Only because you say so."

It takes some doing to get her free of her worn leathers, her arms and legs heavy and near-useless with fatigue. Neither has Fenris any wish to rush; thirty-three days have given Hawke new welts and wounds and scars alike, and he does not intend to miss even one of them. A scattering of bruises across her shoulders, as if she has been grabbed and held roughly more than once; a tender place on her left cheek that she refuses to explain now; a stifled gasp when he presses too hard against a rib in the removal of her wide, new-nicked belt.

"I'll tell you everything," she promises again at his frown, pressing the heel of her hand into a sore place in her thigh. "I swear it."

He'll hold her to that. But he keeps his tongue for the moment, placing her shirts and belt on the little desk to be cleaned as she flops to her back and pulls blindly at the laces to her trousers. "Wait," he tells her, coming back again, going easily to his knees before her to pull her boots from her feet. And maybe he ought to feel something at that, some indignity or familiar shame, but there is no hardship in the service even like this, and as Hawke sighs and flexes her bare foot in his hand he sighs with her, his back bowing, bending forward until his forehead rests against her knee.

The bed shifts as she sits up, leans forward. Her mouth presses gently to the crown of his head, only for a moment; then he pulls free her other boot and stands to help her rid herself of her travel-beaten trousers. When even those are gone he leaves her fumbling tiredly at her breastband while he fetches the half-forgotten shirt Isabela had found for him in Wycome, after that first week when they had realized that there would be no quick stay, that they each would need more to wear while washing than the bare necessities they had managed to carry with them in abject flight.

It is not enough to drown her, but it had been nearly too large on Fenris who is broader in the shoulder; on her the wider neck threatens to slide off completely. All the same it is long enough to cover her to the thigh and soft enough to sleep in, and Hawke rolls the sleeves to her elbows and grins. "Perfect. Like you knew I was coming."

He shakes his head, his fingers skating once over the black fabric at her waist. "I did not always."

"You're here. That's all that matters."

It is not, but he forbears to argue with her at the moment. Instead he goes to extinguish the lamps one by one, leaving only a low brass-bound candle burning by the bedside. By the time he has stripped to his breeches Hawke is already beneath the covers, a low groan slipping loose at their clean comfort; by the time he slides carefully between the sheets beside her she is curled on her side with her black hair spread across the pillow, one hand half-closed at her mouth, her eyelids falling heavier with every blink.

"Fenris," she says, swallowing a magnificent yawn, "is there anybody after you right now? That you know of?"

"What do you mean?"

"Slavers, bandits, maleficarum. A goose with a grudge. Anything like that."

"Not… at the moment."

"Good," she murmurs, her eyes shut. "Then we've both got a chance to rest."

More than that, Fenris thinks, twisting long enough to extinguish the last candle between thumb and forefinger. By the time he turns back to Hawke her breathing has already begun to even out, to slow at last; he touches the pale line of her jaw in what little light edges around the drapes, drawn more against prying eyes than any threat of day. She sighs and turns into the touch, and for an instant he is overwhelmed with that same sudden devastating gladness again, as if the spreading warmth in his chest might overflow all at once to fill all the seams of lyrium with light.

_Hawke is alive_.

He does not remember closing his eyes. He remembers only that he watches her sleep for a long time, and then he dreams, fearing nothing.


	13. Chapter 13

She doesn't mean to be quite so true to her word, but despite her best intentions Hawke spends near the whole of the following day asleep. An unsettling dream about Meredith peters out when Fenris rises just before eighth bell—Hawke dislikes this absence and gives a particularly articulate mumble to that effect—but he is back again in less than ten minutes with a joyful, wriggling furball that bounds onto the bed without invitation.

"Feet," Hawke croaks, shoving Toby's happily-panting face out of her own. Every muscle in her body aches. " _Feet_ , you useless hound."

Toby gives her one more broad swipe with his tongue and pads to the end of the bed, the mattress creaking at every step. An agreeable woof and three tight circles later he has curled at her feet; another shift as Fenris sits again beside her with his back to the headboard. Hawke squirms towards him until her forehead rests against his hip—dressed again, she realizes muzzily, though not in his leathers—and sighs, pleased when his hand drops lightly to her neck, delighted when he gives a low rumble of a laugh.

It is so hard to find the words. "Did someone get the horse?"

"Yes. Go back to sleep," he tells her, and she does.

—

The next time she wakes it is late morning, clean sunlight falling in a long narrow strip across her legs where the curtains are cracked. The dog has moved to the floor, his eyes shut tight; even as she stretches her cramping calves beneath the covers Fenris comes to meet her with a new tray in hand, its pewter plate made colorful with buttered bread, soft cheese, and a bowl of red, sweet-smelling berries. Enough for two.

"If you can," Fenris begins.

Hawke doesn't so much sit as slither in a vaguely upwards direction against the pillows. Fenris snorts and sinks down beside her, steadying the tray until she has arranged herself for the minimum of effort. For all that she is starving it is a quiet meal, Fenris watching her more than his own hands, and when they are finished he leans forward and kisses her: short, and calm, the tartness of the berries on his mouth and the smell of fresh bread still clinging to the air. He releases her soon enough, smiling, and as Hawke readjusts her pillow he carries the emptied tray to the desk.

She is already exhausted. But before she can sleep again Hawke forces herself to roll to her side, to brace her hand against her own ribs and against her thighs where the pain is worst; the blue-white glow of her magic seeps through the covers in both places, lighting Fenris's throat from below in some weird challenge to the day. Then—there. Only irritation, now, where there was real hurt before, and Hawke lets out a slow breath.

Fenris's fingers close gently around her leg through the covers, just above her knee. "An injury?"

Her voice is still so rough. "Only the broken rib. And the bruises, I suppose. Most everything else is from the horse."

His brow furrows. His thumb presses into the long muscle of her thigh, eliciting a pleasant ache, but she is _tired_ and he is displeased and to stave away his questions she links her fingers with his own, brings his knuckles to her lips. He shakes his head even as the pinched look eases, and when sleep reclaims her it is with his hand in hers, his marked thumb sweeping long, smooth strokes along her own.

—

The afternoon gives way to early evening, and the room is dark again the third time she drags her eyes open. Fenris has lit the squat brass-bound candle beside the bed; another two or three flicker on the desk at which he sits, his head bent in study of something she cannot see. Toby has vanished—for dinner, presumably, considering her own distant pangs of hunger—and Hawke rolls towards Fenris with a sigh.

He turns at the sound. "You're awake," he says, his voice low, his brow lifting. "You look more rested than you have."

He looks— _exhausted._ She has never seen him look so worn, not even the first year they knew each other, when trust was harder and he still met her in his mansion with blade in hand. Even his eyes are more lined, the skin there drawn in tight crow's feet, the grooves at the corners of his mouth pulled deeper than ever. His proud nose is the same, she thinks. His pale hair is the same and no thinner, despite her apparent efforts to age him before his time.

She throws off the covers. Fenris makes as if to rise and she waves him away; her own strength will carry her well enough, now, and despite the faint throb still lingering in her thighs she pushes to her feet. The borrowed shirt settles again around her hips and she re-rolls both sleeves as she makes her way across the room, only staggering once and even then not badly.

He watches her come without speaking, his far hand still marking his place in Shartan. Near three-quarters of the way through when the summons from Meredith had come; they will have the chance to finish it now. She's pleased he found it.

Fenris straightens to face the book again as she leans behind him, her arms looping loosely around his neck. He even permits her to rest her chin on his white head, a sure sign he is feeling more indulgent than usual, and they are both quiet as he trails his callused finger to the end of the sentence.

"Riveting reading?" Hawke asks.

"I thought I would take the chance when it was offered. The dog upset your pack."

"I bet he upset a whole lot more than that."

She feels him smile, the strain bleeding from his shoulders. "A good thing, perhaps, that we don't intend to stay here overlong."

No. Only long enough to recover. Long enough for Grantham— "Any news from Isabela? Or Orana?"

"None. Though only Isabela knew I meant to come here as it is, and I would expect no letter from her."

"What?" Hawke stiffens, her hands tensing on his shirt. "Didn't you tell the others?"

"There were no others with us," Fenris points out, and Hawke feels the bottom of her stomach drop away.

"Fenris. Carver, he didn't—he's not—"

" _No_ ," Fenris says quickly, turning in her arms until she can see his eyes. "No, Hawke. Isabela and I left them all well and whole. They only—were not _with_ us when your letter came."

Her heart manages to start again, though it's a shaky, limping thing as like to kill her as the other. "I think I ought to hear this from the beginning."

His mouth twists wryly. "I think the same from you as well."

The room's one overstuffed armchair sits by the unlit fire; at his gesture she takes it, tucking one leg beneath her, leaving him with the desk chair dragged across the warm, colorful rug to match. He lights a small, four-armed candelabra atop the mantel to turn the dimness of the room from assassin's dream to merely ambient, and then he takes his seat and crosses his legs and says, without preamble, "You left me at the Gallows."

It stings more than she expects, that memory. "I was there for that part."

"You said to start at the beginning."

"Mmph. Fair enough. Carry on."

He does. He tells her of the maddened escape from Kirkwall, the great defensive chains scraping along the ship's wooden hull; he tells her of their flight east, just as frantic and just as futile, and the arrival of the group in whole to Wycome and the Gull's Nest. Of Carver, constrained by duty and not choice, who had been forced to part with them earlier than he'd wished. Of writing to Sebastian, waiting day after day after without word—

"Then," Fenris says, and falls silent. His hand clenches on his thigh.

Hawke waits. He masters himself, lifts his eyes again: "Then Varric received word that a man in Kirkwall had claimed the price on your head. We went to Kirkwall…"

She knows what they found there. "Roald."

"I never knew his name. He said—" Fenris pushes up sharply from the chair, turning until all she can see is the stiff lines of his back in the familiar vented leather, made sharper by the candles' shadows. "It doesn't matter. I tried to kill him."

"What stopped you?"

"Aveline. The Guard took custody shortly thereafter."

She wouldn't have minded seeing Roald dead. She _does_ mind, though, the idea of his blood a weight on Fenris's hands and on his mind, and for that reason if nothing else she is glad Aveline stayed him. "Flash bastard. The man took my father's staff, Fenris."

He looks at her over his shoulder, startled. "You don't know, then?"

"Know what?"

Her father's staff is broken. Shattered into three pieces, one each for him and his wife and his daughter Bethany, as surely as if Roald had meant it. It surprises her how quickly tears well at the thought; she fights them down again with general success, and Fenris takes his seat with every line of his body pulled tight.

He does not go into great detail of the weeks following the news. Hawke is glad for that, gladder at the mentions of all her friends save Anders to be hale and home, or as close to it as they can be, and that even now Cullen and his templars have given them little grief. It is such a small mercy to be grateful for, and yet—she has had so few of them to rejoice. She needs to write to them—

She remembers. "You got my letter late, you said."

"Yes. Varric stayed in Kirkwall, and I… could not. I took ship with Isabela and we happened to stop at Wycome. The innkeeper remembered us and that we had been waiting for word, and when I passed by he gave it to me."

"When was that?"

Fenris's eyes lid as he counts. "Thirty days from the fall of the city."

"Shit," Hawke says, and covers her face. "I knew I ought to have posted it myself."

"Yes," Fenris snaps, but there is little heat to it, and soon enough he leans forward with his elbows on his knees and his face intent. "You know the rest. I came here, with the dog, and we waited. And you…"

"Came. Belatedly. The end."

He shakes his head. "From the start. As you _should_ tell it."

"I left you at the Gallows."

" _Hawke._ "

She relents. And starts at the beginning, with the journey to Hightown and Orana, and the race down again to the alienage and safety, at least for a few days. She tells him of how she'd left Toby behind to guard them both—his ears perk at his name, and when Hawke beckons he yawns and comes to lie at her feet, his head heavy across her toes—and of the gates closing and her climbing the roofs just in time to see them slip away into the night. Somewhere in there Emma knocks at the door again with the last tray, two bowls of a steaming vegetable stew and two glasses of elderberry wine. Hardly Fenris's usual fare—she's too familiar with his wine preferences after so many years—but there's little choice in Southfort, and Hawke pays her with good cheer and no attention at all to the girl's gaping at her naked legs.

The stew, regardless, is excellent, and Fenris permits her the brief pause to her own tale for the finishing of it. Then, when he has taken their bowls and empty wineglasses to the mantel: traveling. And the traders outside Ostwick, and their rumors of a slaving ring passing too near, and Hawke's own realization that no matter her haste this was no threat she could ignore, not after ten years in Kirkwall. She tells him of Elina's mother.

And then she gives him the whole truth of the night she met Roald and Walter and George and Leonard, when the dogs had gotten free and Roald had taken her father's staff into the night, and of her own subterfuge to preserve their ignorance. By the time she reaches the fight with the dogs Fenris is on his feet; by the time she tells him of the journey north he is pacing before the unlit fireplace as if she has burnt him. Toby's hackles rise with the tension, his ears flicking back against his skull, and Hawke touches his ruff carefully.

"Fenris," she tries. "You didn't know."

"I should have!" he snarls, his hands cutting through the air. "I doubted him from the first. I knew him to be a liar the moment he opened his mouth and I _still—"_

Hawke struggles from the chair to block his path, Toby rising with her; she does not touch Fenris, but neither does she back away. The rug is surprisingly soft beneath her bare feet. "Fenris, you didn't _know_. You had no way of possibly realizing what he'd done instead; considering Kirkwall's general métier, I'd have been shocked if he _hadn't_ outed himself as a liar quickly enough."

"I told myself this. I let myself believe it."

"He had proof. He had my things. _Fenris_ ," she says again, and now she does come closer, ducking to meet his eyes through his too-long hair, "you have _no fault_ here."

His mouth tightens; he looks away. But his hands unclench at his sides, and the tendons of his tattooed throat ease softer, and when Hawke gestures he goes willingly to the softer armchair she's abandoned, allows her to bend close enough her mouth brushes over his forehead, that his eyes burn greener than ever as he looks up at her. "Continue," he says gruffly, as Toby paces the room through the easing strain, resettles with his great silvered muzzle on the windowsill to survey the night-still streets below. Hawke stretches carefully, touches her side again, and shakes her head.

"Elina was here in Southfort." And eleven others, twelve with Hawke, with the children. And another group at the end of the journey—"or I swear I'd have been here the instant I found her," though Fenris clearly does not believe her—and then nothing to do but wait. Neither does he like to hear of her bound; she's seen that look in his eyes before, and when she describes the journey northeast in the wagons he leans forward to take both her wrists in hand, turning them over and over, as if he might find the chafed, blistered skin that had been left behind.

Hawke perches on the overstuffed arm of the chair to give him rein, stretching her legs across Fenris's lap. The fight near Ansburg she tells quickly, uneager to relive deaths so fresh in her memory as it is; Fenris nods at several points, as if playing the battle in his mind, and asks clarification only twice on position and terrain. "A good fight," he says at last, though he touches the place where her rib had been broken.

Hawke says, "A short one."

"Not short enough."

She inclines her head. From there she has little left to tell him: only the return journey from the Minanter to Hercinia to Ostwick, where Elina's mother had told her at last of the bounty claimed and her death made known too widely. "And then I rode a horse," she adds, leaning forward until her forehead bumps against his own. "But you knew that already."

"Something of the sort." His hand tightens on her wrist, then moves to her bare thigh, where the pad of his thumb presses into the muscle. "Are you still in pain?"

"Recovering nicely, serah. I thank you for your generous concern."

He snorts, rolling his eyes, but there is something— "Spare me, Hawke."

She cups his jaw, holds him to look him square in the face. His eyes flick away, then return in something like defiance; and when she lifts a silent eyebrow she is immensely gratified to see the tips of his ears, ever so faintly, flush.

She is not so cruel as to demand more. Instead she leans down to kiss him directly on the mouth, an answer and a promise, too, coaxing his lips to part until she can taste the wine still lingering there. For all his show of reluctance he meets her readily; his hands come around her waist and higher on her thigh, and she nearly—she _wants—_

"Tomorrow," she whispers against his mouth. "Give me one more night, Fenris."

He breaks away, shuddering, and rests his forehead against hers. "I am yours."

Stunning, the swell of love at that. She kisses him again more tenderly, makes no protest when he stands with her in arms and takes her to bed. Very distantly she finds herself appalled that she could still be so tired after near a full day dead to the world—but she _is_ , and by the time Fenris has doused the candles and stripped to lie behind her, her back pulled tight to his chest, she is already half-asleep. Enough strength left for her healing; enough mind to notice the lyrium flickering gently through the darkness where his skin touches hers until she lets the magic die.

Toby huffs sleepily from the floor beside the bed. Fenris presses his nose to the nape of her neck—

Hawke sleeps.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a small reminder, this fic is rated M. Two more chapters to go after this! :)

Brown-thrush singing all day long  
In the leaves above me,  
Take my love this April song,  
"Love me, love me, love me!"

When he harkens what you say,  
Bid him, lest he miss me,  
Leave his work or leave his play,  
And kiss me, kiss me, kiss me!  
— _Love Me_ , Sara Teasdale

—

Fenris has often been woken roughly. Nightmares most frequently, but blows just as often when he was a slave, and more than once the flat of a blade beneath his chin, and on one memorable occasion a particularly territorial mockingbird; but this is the first time in his admittedly inconstant memory that he has been dragged from sleep by someone nibbling at his left ear.

He rasps, "What." It is not a question.

"Fenris," Hawke coos, far too cheerful for the infant dawn still creeping around the curtains, "my love, my darling, light of my eyes and star of my life."

His chest heats despite himself, and he twists out of her treacherous mouth's reach. "You want something."

"I do not. How do you know?"

"The sun is hardly up, and already you have resorted to both cannibalism and flattery."

She grins. "It's been so long. I'm a changed woman."

"Barely a month."

"Some change happens quickly."

Fenris can't stop his laugh. His arm is still draped over her waist; he pulls her closer despite the threat of her lips until he can feel her neck to knee against him, can feel the rise of her breath in the thin grey light yet too early to be called morning. "Why are you awake?"

"Do you want the truth or more flattery?"

"Somehow I suspect my choice has little bearing on the outcome."

She wriggles in his arms until she can kiss the skin beneath his jaw where the lyrium hooks. "I was overcome with lust. I couldn't bear another minute without your prickly, sleepy, puffy-eyed glare and the sweet caress of morning breath."

He obligingly offers his best scowl. "And the truth?"

"I have lain awake a quarter-hour trapped here between you and the dog, and if you don't let me out of this bed this minute I'm going to roast alive."

He laughs again despite himself, and this time when Hawke pulls free he lets her go, clambering gracelessly over his waist to the edge of the overfull bed before tossing the cream-colored quilts atop him again. The dog huffs and rolls to its back with all four legs splayed in the air; Hawke stretches forward and then back in the center of the room with no wince at the movement, her shirt riding dangerously high on her hips, and Fenris throws his arm over his eyes.

"I saw a pump in the courtyard downstairs," she says, running her hands through her disheveled hair. "No bathing room at a place like this, I suppose?"

"The innkeeper has a small hip-bath, if you wish to draw and heat your own water. It is…" he tries to think of the word to describe it, finds nothing tactful enough to suit. "Aged."

"I take your point. Or points, as it were." She begins to tie her hair back, then thinks better of it and leaves it loose, reaching instead for the freshly-laundered trousers Emma had brought with last night's meal and tugging them on roughly. "I'll rinse off as best I can without denuding myself and come back, then."

"I'll go with you."

Hawke blinks, then softens, coming to meet him as he throws back the covers and sits up. "If you like," she says, leaning forward to rest her hands on his thighs, pressing a quick kiss to his nose. "I'd be glad to have the company."

—

They are both gasping by the time Fenris pins Hawke to the door.

He shouldn't have gone—or he shouldn't have let her go first, shouldn't have watched her bend so easily at the waist before the cast-bronze pump, her hair a spill of dark tangles under the water framing every damnably hooded look she'd given him as she rinsed it. Shouldn't have let her coax him out of his shirt at his own turn despite the clear dawn hour— _certainly_ ought not to have let her sit on the nearby bench, slowly running heated fingers through her hair to dry it, the unashamed weight of her gaze on his bare skin stripping him of strength and breath alike.

Should have stopped her, perhaps, when she'd come to stand near him by the slowing trickle of streamwater, when she'd dragged the very tips of her fingers down his chest and clenching stomach to hook them in his waistband and tug him closer. Should have stepped away the moment she'd leant towards him until her lips just barely brushed over his own, and she'd murmured, "I think thirty-six days is _enough_ , don't you?"

Should have, as if it mattered. He'd been lost regardless. And now they're on the wrong side of his door in the hour after dawn, his palms flat to the wood beside her head, one of her hands clutching the back of his neck and the other fisted against his shoulder his crumpled, forgotten shirt. Her mouth is so hot and her hands even hotter—she'd meant it when she said she'd been roasting—and Fenris cannot taste enough, can hardly bear what little space still persists between them. He crowds closer against her, not caring if he burns—

Hawke curses. He meets her open mouth with his own, intent if inexpert, but she gasps again and her fingernails dig into his bare shoulder, and makes a low eager noise that has him groaning—

At _last_ she finds the doorknob. Both of them nearly fall with its sudden opening, and then Hawke says, "Toby, _out_ ," and her face is flushed and her eyes too bright. The moment the dog has slunk forlornly from the room she kicks the door closed again, pins Fenris to it in swift reversal, in echo of another night too many years ago, when this had not yet been named between them and he'd lost his own heart for fear. No fear now, not even the smallest portion of it: only gladness and astonishing warmth and a sense of something like relief.

He kisses her again, and again, long and slow and deep as he can make it, his fingers sliding through her hair, his arms wrapping around her waist to hold her tighter with every staggering breath. She makes no protest at the pressure; he cannot even close his eyes against her no matter how bright she grows, no matter the overfull swelling of emotion, and when she breaks to breathe there is a smile on her face as whole and content as he has seen her in months. Well before Meredith. Not since the night, perhaps, when he had gathered together what pieces of his hope were left and laid them carefully at her feet—

Hawke kisses him _hard_ , yanking away only long enough to drag her damp borrowed shirt over her head. No breastband beneath, nothing left but her trousers; undaunted, she plants her hand solidly in the center of his chest and drives him backwards, three steps, four, until his knees hit the bed and he pulls her down atop him. Dawn has come in truth by now, sun streaming through the curtains; the quilts rise around him in a pale gold-edged cloud and when they settle Hawke is still there, still stretched above him, bare from the waist up, smiling, glowing, _lovely—_

She says his name. Says it again when he hooks his arm around her waist and tugs her flush to his chest; gasps it when her roving fingers ignite the lyrium in brilliant rippling flares down his ribs, up the narrow channel of his throat. He arches his neck despite himself and Hawke takes full advantage, her mouth coming hot to the tendons there, her teeth closing gently at his collarbone, her tongue teasing its way to the base of his right ear. "I missed you," she murmurs, and follows her voice along the long curve of his ear, too light to satisfy and too true to tease. "Frequently. Rather keenly, too."

His hands spread over the muscles of her bare back, his calluses over her skin made rougher by the contrast. He says, lightheaded, "I thought you were gone from me."

Her mouth moves from his ear to his throat again, then to his chest, tracing a line of lyrium as it curls away from his sternum with kisses damp enough that the cooler air after makes him shiver. "Never."

" _Never_ again," he agrees, huskier than he means it, and then one of her hands drops from his chest to the laces of his trousers, and his breath sighs out in a rush. He grips her shoulders, her hair yet damp beneath; she shakes him loose to work her way down his ribs, over his navel, to the converging lyrium lines at the rise of his hipbones as he sits up to follow her.

She slides to her knees beside the bed, between his legs; at his wordless noise her eyes flick up, one mischievous brow quirked in question. His mouth abruptly dry, Fenris pushes his weight to his hands, giving her the freedom—and she takes it, her palms skimming flat along his bare hips to take his trousers and breeches together with them. A kick and they are gone, forgotten to some corner, and Hawke is touching his knee, his stomach, leaning forward just enough to press a kiss to the curl of lyrium in the crease of his thigh. Then she stands and Fenris can do nothing but watch her yank at her own laces and he wants, he wants to hold her.

So he does.

To Hawke's credit, she manages to swallow her yelp when he snares her and drags her down to him, shifting both of them on the bed until his back is against the pillows, until her back is against his chest. She blows out a breath he can feel in his own ribs and untangles her left ankle from her trousers, and then her long, naked legs stretch out between his own in the dawn sun and her feet flex and he must close his eyes because it is too much, after so long, to be real.

Her stomach, rising and falling under his arm—her pulse thumping fast and hard in her wrist where he still holds her.

_Stop doubting._

The warmth of her skin is the same. He remembers it. And the high, stifled noise when his palm slides to her breast, when his thumb flicks over her there and presses—he remembers that, too, and the way she pushes her whole self back against him when he drags his other hand from her hip to her thigh and inward, his fingers slow enough that he can keep his own control, intent enough that she cannot accuse him of torment. Hawke throws her head back against his shoulder when he moves against her, her eyes clenched shut; there is nothing of dampness to her hair now, not with the heat pouring off her, and Fenris drops his open mouth against the soft skin beneath her rounded ear.

Hawke curses at his teeth, and again when he lights just the barest glint of lyrium in his fingertips. Her heels dig into the bedclothes and her fingers clench into his legs; she gives a breathless laugh and arches against him and it is all he can do to hold her, his hands slipping on skin made slick with sweat. "Fenris," she gasps when a second has become a minute has become five, when she is nearly writhing under him, "damn it— _Fenris,_ " and then her hand is on his hand like a fire-white brand, guiding and demanding all at once, holding him hard even as her hips buck up twice, three times—she turns her face at the last, her mouth coming clumsily against his own, and he cups her head with his free hand to hold her there.

"I love you," she says, when she can speak, and Fenris laughs through the tightness in his throat.

"Already you resort to bribery."

She kisses his cheek, his jaw, her fingers loosening enough to link through his own. "Mm. Maybe I'm just glad I'm off the horse."

Fenris snorts, and in a swift bunching of muscles he has turned her to her back beneath him, her hair spreading over the pillows, the half-open curtains spilling young light across her face and the cream-colored quilts alike. He braces his elbows on either side of her head, lets a portion of his weight settle onto her hips, reading every sign he has ever learned in her face for pain, for any lingering aches he risks hurting with his ungentle care. Instead she grins, nothing of tension to her mouth, in the smoothing of her palms along his waist and back and lower. Unable to keep back the edge of a smile, he says, "I am, as well."

After that, they do not hurry. Hawke kisses him lazily, stretching each languorous touch into the next; Fenris finds every inch of her with tongue and fingertip alike, working her again into a slow rise as the sun rises, unwilling to lose even a second to haste when he has at last this chance to savor each one. Her fingers trail through his hair and down the back of his neck to make the lyrium gleam, and when at last she is ready and he is braced she takes him in hand and smiles and slowly, slowly, he _moves_ —

It is no great ending, as he'd half-expected it might be; nor is it overwhelming like the great slide of rock from a mountain after rain, burying everything in its path. Rather, it is the opening door at the end of a long and weary road, the soft light of a hearth and a low glad voice welcoming him, saying: here is the journey ended at last.

Hawke's legs bend at his sides, one ankle hooking around his thigh as they find something like a rhythm, slow at first, steady as he has ever been with a knot of such tangled emotion behind his ribs. Then, after an age: quickening as she pleads, as she grips the headboard above her with both hands, as she bares to him every shift of her pale throat. He touches it, presses a dazed kiss to its hollow; then he grasps the crook of her knee to pull her closer, to pull himself closer to her, and tries to breathe. He would have this last forever—he cannot bear another moment. It is too much. He cannot—

Fenris fumbles for her hands, tugs them from their clutching at the headboard's rails to his own shoulders. He hardly knows—and then he shifts and she _gasps_ , her fingernails digging into his back to spark the lyrium between his shoulder-blades to sudden life. He shudders, bending closer, his forehead sliding against hers. More. More, just as that had been—

"Fenris," she says abruptly, and then, her voice trembling, " _Damn_ you," and that is all the warning he receives before her arms seize around him and every line of her body goes tense as forge-drawn wire. For an instant he cannot move, blinded by heat as if he holds a star; her hands streak down his back to leave fire behind, and he cries out, every line of lyrium on his body blazing—

She says his name a third time. He muffles his shout in her shoulder, his eyes clenched shut against the light, and is lost.

—

Fenris does not know the word for it. He searches for one for a long time, while Hawke's head is on his chest and his arm is around her shoulder, turns over words like _peace_ and _home_ and _happiness_ for all their shades of meaning and finds them wanting. Now and then Hawke talks softly of nothing, enough to ease the silence without disturbing it, and now and then Fenris makes some agreeable noise in answer.

_Whole_ : a trite sentiment and untrue besides, considering he keeps the shard-sharp edges of those days spent apart within him even now, though they are duller than they were. At rest, perhaps—but that doesn't fit either, because regardless of what rest they've captured here they both know too well that it is transient. The warden of Southfort's prisons must be dealt with; the templars must be assuaged; Carver and Isabela and the others must see Hawke, because no letter can suffice without her smile.

Hawke closes her eyes against the bright, lazy sunlight, her hair spilling dark over his shoulder, and turns her cheek against the slope of his collarbone so that half her face lies in shadow. "What are you thinking about?"

"Nothing," he says, true, and adds, also true: "Words, perhaps."

"Mm. Any you'd care to share?"

"No."

Hawke laughs, and Fenris smirks, and somehow when he leans to kiss her she is already there. "Stubborn," she says against his mouth, still smiling, and he loves her for it.

A peculiar thought, that. More peculiar that it should have context at all, that after all the years and the death between them he should still have someone he dares to name a lover, that she should be a mage and an apostate and he not find her the lesser for it. That he, slave, _fugitivus,_ should have something to call his own—something precious besides, something he would die to protect by choice and not command. That he should _trust—_

"Your brow," Hawke murmurs, reaching up to prod at it with two fingers, "has just gone _abominably_ furrowed."

He smiles despite himself, the tension easing. "My apologies. It isn't the company."

"Very convincing, considering the last time I saw that look I was asking you to help me get Merrill those bits of ironbark from the Coast. That sort of 'I-don't-know-why-I'm-doing-this-but-I-think-I-hate-everything-about-it' look."

" _No_ ," Fenris says, and kisses her again. "Don't assign me motivation, Hawke. For once, I am content."

"For once," Hawke echoes, laughing, and laughs again at the sudden, plaintive, _familiar_ howl echoing faintly from the courtyard beneath their window. "Poor Toby! She must have thrown him out."

Fenris nods, distracted, caught by his own thoughts. _For once, I am—_

The word fits. It will not last forever, but for now, in this moment with Hawke's head on his shoulder and her smile against his skin, with no future before them but what they choose to make themselves—

It is enough. He is content.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter after this. Goodness, I can hardly believe it's almost over already! Recommended listening: [Vengeance by Zack Hemsey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lhv_yFMuwxs). Well, quasi-recommended, anyway. It's what I listened to writing it, though I'm not sure it's the best reading music. Regardless, it's there if you like.

Frederick Grantham is, above all else, a businessman.

It's always been true. His youth had been one venture after another: the breeding of hunting hounds, the brief foray into lumber capital, the small side market of his niece's homemade bead jewelry. They hadn't always been successful—the jewelry, as it turned out, had presented little appeal outside the family—but they'd been valuable experience for a man who knew everyone had a price and everything could be sold to the right buyer.

Still, the trade of flesh had been little more than an accident. He'd spent his earliest adult years in Hercinia when a distant aunt had died and left him her small, cheap shop. He'd grown the business in the first five years to a thriving mercantile, married a trader's daughter with no higher aspirations than a child at her feet and gold in her purse, and lost her again to an Orlesian silks merchant with roving eyes and better hands than his own, though not before she'd left him with a crying toddler and a solid trunkful less of coin.

He'd been in a fury for months after that, throwing himself into his business day and night. The work had helped, a little, but he'd never been accustomed to losing what he'd gained, and when at last one of his less reputable business partners had come to him in one evening with a nervous rumor of _merchandise_ , he'd been too eager for the promised percentage to decline. The slave had been old, not a runaway but one who'd accompanied her master into the Marches before he died of illness, one who needed to be returned, safely, to the markets of Minrathous.

Her eyes had been flat, beaten, and she had not lifted her hand in protest once. It had been... so _easy_.

The next came easier. And the next after that, and after that, and then the one had become three and then five, and it had become more profitable to cut out the dead weight of his partner and hire his own muscle instead. Eventually the chattel had looked not so beaten when George and Leonard acquired them, nor so free of anger, but by then Grantham had been well into the books and his hands had been clean enough, and if his conscience twinged on occasion the sound of gold on a scale was usually enough to assuage him.

And then, of course, Walter had set lightning to the neighbor's cat in the middle of the yard when he was fourteen, and that had been that for Hercinia. A goodly sum it had taken, too, to get the guards to look the other way and to seal the neighbor's mouth, but Walter never had been terribly bright. Too much like his mother.

Roald had saved him. Grantham knows enough to recognize that, though he's paid the debt many times over since that first letter from his cousin. Roald had been the one to write him, to tell him of Southfort's empty Guard-Captain's place and a prison that wanted wardening: only a few guards beneath him and the city's steward senile enough to let forged histories pass by without notice. He'd known enough sword-work to pass muster; everything else had been a matter of keeping the captaincy empty, of keeping the small force he commanded under his thumb. All he'd had to do was sell himself as a man who knew his trade, and Grantham has always been a master tradesman.

The respect and title had been expected, deserved. The ancient moldering prison hidden well beneath the foundations of the newer, common one, however, had been a pleasant surprise.

Arrested by the thought, Grantham alters his path to make for the door hidden behind the unused office's tapestry, at the far end of the west hall. He doesn't like visiting the prison cells when they're unfilled; it makes him feel empty, even knowing that George and Leonard will be back within the day, enough coin in hand to keep them drunk and whoring for weeks. Still, it's to his own benefit to keep the cell doors oiled and well-maintained; a job for a lesser man, perhaps, but Grantham prefers a small tight-run ship in situations such as these, and who would know his needs better than he himself?

Ser Rhoda steps deferentially from his path as he rounds the last corner to the west hall, and he gives her an absent nod. She's not his favorite guard: a little too bright by half, though not nearly so observant as she thinks she is, and possessed of that streak of stubborn morality that has led to more than one of her compatriot's reassignments over the years. He reminds himself to look into her file at the next opportunity and then puts the matter from his mind altogether, stepping into the unused office and locking the door behind him.

And behind the tapestry on the far wall, the prison cells: he twists the knob and descends into darkness, not bothering with the expense of a torch. He knows the path well enough as it is. Down a long, narrow stone stairway, then up again a dozen steps, and then the familiar room, its high barred window allowing in a single square of thin, grey sunlight.

After removing his overtunic—real gold-thread embroidery at the hems too fine for such menial work, and he's always liked the lily pattern—Grantham oils the hinges, goes through each cell carefully for signs of digging or crumbling mortar, for any hidden messages one unfortunate might have left for another. Nothing obvious, though there is an odd charred mark in the last cell on the left where he'd kept that spirited one from Roald's last trip south. George, perhaps, a bit loose with his torch in light of a smart mouth. He'll have to speak to him, too. It's been too long since his last letter. He wonders—

It's been too long since the last letter.

Grantham stills mid-step. How long has it been? Four days since it was due. Three since he ought to have heard from Roald with details of the next shipment—

He does not remember the stairs upward again. He barely even remembers to check the hallway before he bursts from the empty office; it is only the blur of unlit torches on the wall and the old yellow heraldry of the Southfort guard and then the empty benches of the mess hall, a single seat taken in the whole of the room.

"Kirklin," he snaps, and the blond man leaps to attention, overturning his porridge with his elbow. A stolid, doltish brute of a man, who's never questioned an order in his life— "Go to the inns, the taverns. Find me any news of Kirkwall you can get and word of any delayed messages, and don't show your face to me again without an answer. Do you understand?" An important question, as Kirklin rarely does without further explanation—

But he salutes and turns on his heel, and Grantham watches him go, his arms crossed over his chest. He's never been a betting man, but...

He has a bad feeling about this.

—

Maker.

Maker's light, he's _ruined_.

Roald in prison in Kirkwall. Roald held on some trumped-up charge, Grantham _certain_ it's only a front for a slaving charge they can't stick, because he was fool enough to trust a man _not him_ with such a delicate operation. Prisoner for the foreseeable future, no word yet even of a trial—no word even of his own defense. He will not be returning with the shipment—and Grantham crumples the letter Kirklin has brought him and smoothes it out again, rereading for the fourth time the inquiry from his contacts in Cytates. Never arrived. They'd never _arrived._

He doesn't understand. George and Leonard have made that trip dozens of times, enough for even Walter to drive it without hand-holding. The shipment had been no different from the others. Even that last spirited girl had had no more to recommend her than the other defiants throughout the years, and they had every one taken the chains eventually. He doesn't understand—

Regardless, he cannot wait here and do nothing. To retrace their steps—difficult but not impossible, considering the route. A messenger might do the same given enough coin, but—he _despises_ hiring people for such simple things as that, and he's been given proof enough of the risk outsiders pose in the notice of Roald's fate.

"Warden? Are you all right?"

He turns away from the broad window of his office, annoyed. Ser Rhoda stands in his open doorway, her brown hair pushed behind her ears, her eyes too inquisitive by half. "Yes," he says sharply. "As you were."

"Ser," she says, her voice flat, and begins to withdraw, but—

_Damn and blast_! "Wait," he says, crossing to his desk and refolding the letters along crisp creases. "My cousin in Kirkwall has fallen ill. I've little choice but to go tend to him for a few weeks, so I'll be away from the prisons. I've left instructions with Kirklin for upkeep during my absence."

"With Ser Kirklin? But—"

"Whom I trust you'll show the same loyalty as you do me. Ser Rhoda."

"Ser," she says again, suitably daunted, and this time when she retreats Grantham does not chase her. He has enough to do. He must pack—and he'll have to get supplies, and a horse from the stables as his own have gone with the wagon—

Tonight, then. He'll leave tonight.

—

A thousand Blighted damnations, but there's a light on in the old prison. Grantham only sees it because the bloody mare is late to arrive and his valet doesn't have his valise strapped down until well after dusk; just as he's about to mount the beast he catches the glimmer of light in a window that ought to be lightless, and it takes some doing to keep the streak of curses suppressed. The one point of access to the outside world for the whole damned room—he'd tried boarding it up, once, but the stench had done more to alert the guard than the occasional torch in a window half-hidden by bushes and overgrown weeds.

Still. He cannot ignore it, so he thrusts the reins into the valet's hands with a barked order and stalks back into the prison. One more delay, and if Kirklin's set the hall afire _again—_

He stalks down the corridors in high dudgeon, blessedly managing to avoid what few of his guardsmen still remain as he throws open the tapestry to the stairs beyond. Light flickers towards him down the hall, its source somewhere yet beyond what he can see; then, all at once, the torchlight goes out. He is left in darkness.

Something is not right.

There is no choice, though, but to press forward, and when he reaches the end of the hall Grantham takes one of the unlit torches in its small basket by the door as erstwhile club. The hinges do not squeak—he's oiled them, after all, and he knows how to take pride in his work—and then he is in the old prison, torch clutched in hand, and the door clicks closed behind him.

The room is dark. A bit of moonlight filters in through the window to glint off the iron bars and the sanded flagstones, throwing long stripes of shadow like bars themselves over the floor. They spill over his feet; it unnerves him and he steps to the side without meaning to, widening his eyes against the dark as if it might help. All the same it's hardly enough to see by, and Grantham forcibly keeps himself from wiping his palm on his tunic. It is so _quiet_ here at night, but—there is no reason for it not to be. The cells are empty. He'd checked. The cells are—

"Hello, Grantham."

He jumps, yelps, and flings the torch all in one instant. It rattles away onto stone and disappears; Grantham staggers backwards, one hand to his heart, the other grasping for the support of the cool iron-barred cell door beside him. He must sound brave— "Who are you? What do you want?"

"I think you know why I'm here."

A woman. It _is_ a woman's voice, vaguely familiar but not one of his Cytates contacts, and he knows no other who ought to be here. "This is private property. You're trespassing."

"Trespassing?" she says, her voice low and bladed and _dangerous_ , and even as he strains to see a spark flares in the darkness like flint from tinder, and a small white flame begins to grow not around a torch but a slender gloved hand—

He knows the face that flickers with every shift of flame, knows that spirited steel-eyed defiance. "Trespassing?" she says again, one eyebrow arched, flame licking lazily from palm to wrist to elbow, striking off the edge of polished armor at her throat, her shoulder. Apostate, as Walt is. "Grantham, you _brought_ me here."

He cannot keep the panic from his voice. "I know you. I know you, and you're not supposed to be here. You're supposed to be—"

"Well on my way to a Minrathous market. I gathered the general idea. I decided it wasn't for me."

His feet carry him backwards against his will. This is not the courage he wants—and then he backs into something solid and unyielding, and he whirls with a start to see a dark-skinned elf he does not know, a tattooed man with white hair and a greatsword strapped to his back the equal to his height. His face is still and blank, but there's something in his eyes that _burns—_

"Fenris," the woman says behind him, "is not fond of slavers."

He licks his lips. "I'll get the guard. You won't escape from this room, I'll—I'll send you _both_ if I have to, if I have to bribe every soldier from here to the Minanter!"

The elf's face does not change; neither does he reach for his sword, and somehow this impassive implacability is worse than any rage. Grantham spins again, looking to the dark-haired woman as she reaches her burning hand to the unlit torch on the wall beside her—the mage, the apostate, and Walter had been _so_ useless without a staff—but there is nothing of fear in her face, no shadow of anything but resolve as the torch flickers into life. She says, "I never did tell you my name, did I?"

"No, I—"

"It's Hawke," she says, as if discussing the weather, and he feels the name drop like a stone into his gut. "I'm the Champion of Kirkwall."

"Hawke," he sighs, and his knees sag enough that even his grip on the bars cannot keep him on his feet. Kirkwall's Champion, who killed the qunari Arishok in single combat, who tore apart the Gallows in a night of flame and smoke to break the Circle into pieces. Who sat in his cell for two weeks, no food but what George managed and no company but slaves— "I'll—I'll pay you. A hundred sovereigns, if you'll forget this and leave me in peace."

"Grantham," she says mildly, and he wishes she'd stop saying his _name_ , "you tried to sell me and twelve others like me into slavery. You have been kidnapping the defenseless for years. You have abused every law of your station and your authority over your men to _keep_ doing this, so what in flames makes you think there is any amount of gold that could make me look away?"

His throat is so dry. "Three hundred." Then, at her look, and he is begging on his _knees_ and he cannot stop himself, "A thousand! _A thousand sovereigns, Champion_!"

Silence.

And then, like the crack of doom, armored footsteps on stone behind him. He cannot turn; he cannot blink; he cannot breathe.

Rhoda. And Kirklin, looking as heartbroken as a rock could look, and Astra and Kinsey and Morgan all in uniform and bearing torches and naked blades, and in the space of three heartbeats they are around him in a loose circle with no escape, no reckoning but their judgment, and no _chance_. Not for him, who has never trusted it in his life.

"Serah Frederick Grantham," Rhoda says, her face white, "as newly-named Guard-Captain of Southfort, I place you under arrest."

His ears are buzzing with disaster. He can hardly feel Kinsey's arms as he's pulled to his feet, doesn't even notice the cold weight of manacles closing around his wrists just above the gold-embroidered lilies. All at once, to have it all come down like this after so many years in nothing but _days—_

He says, from very far away, "What happened to my son?"

"I'm sorry," Hawke says. The elf has moved to stand beside her, turned away from them both; he says something in a low, rumbling voice and the Champion nods in answer. There is no anger in her face now. "Walter is dead."

Walter is dead.

He cannot understand. Walter can no more die than iron keep from rusting, or canvas not fade in the sun. He is constant as a burr in his shoe, always there, always lagging just behind and somehow devoted all the same, and Grantham cannot—

One high dry sob escapes him, the sound of the collapsing of all his hopes. Kinsey's arms, Rhoda's shoulders, and Walter— _dead._

Frederick Grantham is above all else. He has always been, has always known himself to be more than what he was given—but now he has been stripped of both livelihood and fatherhood in the span of an hour, and there is not enough gold in the world to pay the price of it.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so, at last, we've come to the end of another one. I am genuinely grateful to everyone who's taken the time to comment; I've read and treasured every single one. As always, thank you for reading.
> 
> Corwin is borrowed with permission from tarysande's & w0rdinista's epic [From the Ashes.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/504152/chapters/886175)
> 
> Recommended listening: [Tenuous Winners Returning Home](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHxYpnaaw3s) from the Hunger Games OST, preferably on repeat.

So, she leaning on her husband's arm, they turned homeward by a rosy path which the gracious sun struck out for them in its setting. And O there are days in this life, worth life and worth death.

— _Our Mutual Friend,_ Charles Dickens

—

The sea is _good_ today.

It's Isabela's favorite sea, actually, when the sky's barely clouded grey and the slate-dark waves beat just rough enough against the hull to send the _Siren's Call_ soaring through their foamy spray. A low-rolling fog had set in just before dawn and lingers still, not thick enough to hide a reef but sufficient to soften the distant coastline's trees, and if she looks eastward it's as if they've come together in the same piece, an endless wave.

She stands at the starboard rail, her arms crossed, waiting for the call from the crow's nest above. There's a letter in her belt that she's trying desperately not to think of, one that had been waiting for the ship in Rivain. Two short lines and enough to smash all her plans to smithereens; and now she's here on this same route _again_ , less than a league from Ostwick, sailing on as much blind hope as she ever has.

She tosses her head in the salt breeze, listening for the cry of gulls, and the words rise unbidden to the forefront of her mind. _Come to Ostwick._ She shakes her head again more sharply—

_Come to Ostwick. Hawke is—_

"Land ho!" Gryler shouts, and sure enough, the double walls of Ostwick have slipped through the mists to rise tall and proud over the orderly stone piers. Thalia guides them in with aplomb, even under Isabela's critical eye on the docking, but the moment the ship comes to rest her mind is gone again, caught up in a sea-wind like a bird on the wing. _Come to Ostwick_. She remembers when Fenris could barely spell his own name.

The gangplank slides out, comes to rest on the quay with a hollow thud. Or—is that her heart?

A flash of white hair and dark skin at the far end of the docks, and that is _definitely_ her heart. Blasted unreliable thing, always cropping up at the worst moments as if she hadn't better things to do with herself. There's someone with him, walking just behind. If only these mists could bugger _off_ —

She doesn't run. Isabela's proud of herself for that. She walks sedately forward until she's within arm's reach of them both, and then she looks at Fenris and says, almost steadily, "You wilted son of a sea-sponge. What did I tell you about leaving without saying goodbye?"

He gives her an honest-to-goodness _smirk,_ one shoulder lifting in an unabashed shrug. "I left word with Thalia."

"But not with _me_."

"You were not there."

Isabela purses her lips, turning her glare from Fenris to his companion. "And _you_ ," she says, and stops. "You—"

"Hello," says Hawke, grinning like her face might split. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"

She ought to just have Fenris tear the damn thing out. She can't remember the last time it ached so badly. "I've half a mind to knock you silly and keelhaul you after. Do you _know_ what you've been doing to the others?"

Just the others, mind. Not to Isabela, pirate queen; she's strong enough to survive it. Worse storms have come through before and passed over just the same, and if it hurt like a blade between the ribs every time Hawke was mentioned it wasn't anything Isabela couldn't smile through or kill through and she's— _missed_ her, the irritating fool.

Hawke's eyes soften. "I do. And I'm sorry, honestly. Things just got a little… out of hand."

"A _little_ ," Isabela echoes mockingly. "If your story's not good enough I might toss you over anyway."

"Captain," Hawke says, saluting, smiling, and Isabela gives in at last, wrapping the woman in an embrace as tight as she can bear it, not caring that her necklace scrapes over steel or Hawke's gauntlets dig a little too hard into her back. A month and a half she's waited for this, hoped against her better judgment when all seemed irretrievably lost—and now this glorious shout of victory trapped somewhere in her chest, scratching her throat and pricking the backs of her eyes, and _damn_ her if Fenris isn't watching with a smile and enough understanding to half-offend. Besotted idiot, that one, and she ignores any flavor of hypocrisy in the sentiment.

"I missed you," Hawke tells her, breath catching just enough that Isabela can feel it in the stir of her sigh.

 _Come to Ostwick_ , she thinks, and grins fiercely into Hawke's hair.

_Hawke is alive._

_—_

_Hello, sister._

_At least, I'm assuming it's actually you and not some Fade demon come out of Kirkwall to play one last irritating joke on me. I don't know why they'd want to pretend to be you considering the messes you drag yourself into on a regular basis, but I guess with you anything's possible._

_You probably think it's a joke now that all's over and done with. Don't even pretend you don't. I've known you too long, and I can hear you sniggering under your breath from whatever Maker-forsaken hole of a city you're in now. I bet you laughed all the way to Wycome at the thought of us pining after you. Laughed until you_ _cried_ _, I bet. A cranky elf and a Grey Warden have both got better things to do than sit around waiting for someone to decide if they're going to be alive or not. Brat._

 _Wardens aren't supposed to go haring off, you know, even if Anders managed it. I got an earful worse than Mother ever gave me when I came straggling back to the commander. Didn't even have anything to show for it except two weeks in a rainy, leaky inn with_ _Fenris_ _. Honestly, I think he took it harder than I did. Which isn't to say it was easy, listening to gabby traders swap stories about someone getting chucked off a cliff—someone you cared about—someone you once watched black her own eye with a potato—because it wasn't. Bloody maddening, actually._

_Good on you for getting the slavers. Don't get used to the compliments. But going off after them alone like that…_

_Don't do it again, sister. I refuse to be the last Hawke. It's too heavy a name for one person to carry by himself, not when he's used to sharing the load, and to get that letter from Varric—_ _that_ _letter, the one you've had nightmares about even before the Wardens got them going stronger than ever—I won't lie to you, not about this. They thought I was going to kill someone, or myself, or every bloody darkspawn from here to Kal-Sharok. I don't know if they were right. I don't remember much until I was looking at your handwriting again a week later. They said it was like I woke up out of a fever. More like a great bloody stone lifted off my chest, I reckon. Pretty terrible either way, and I hope you know it's all_ _your_ _fault_ _._

_The next time you get a wild hair to take off on your own I'll stop you myself if I have to. It's a long time since you were able to trounce me in the yard by the chicken coop, and I've got a great heavy sword now besides. Of course, that's if Fenris doesn't kill you first. You'd deserve it, too. That elf is sick over you, and I'll be right burnt if I ever have to watch him brood out a window again because you couldn't be bothered to leave a note._

_I'm glad you're alive. There, I said it._

_Keep writing._

_Carver_

_—_

In a well-appointed room in one of Starkhaven castle's oldest towers, Sebastian leans both hands on the windowsill and looks south, towards Kirkwall. He cannot say why the place weighs so heavy on his mind this morning; so often thought of Kirkwall has brought him only anger lately, and yet he had awoken just after dawn thinking of the Chantry there, and his cell at the end of the brothers' wing, and the way the remembrance votives threw candlelight at the feet of the great Andraste like supplicants.

His city rolls down the mountain before him, gleaming white and gold and rust-red from the hardy clay of the high places, and beyond Starkhaven's walls the great plains of the Marches sigh and wave with every unchecked wind. Kirkwall had been his home near seven years and has hold on him even now, but this—this is his _heart_ , even with the bruises of the hollows his family has left behind, his father's name in every door, his mother's touch in every vase of the familiar fresh-gold roses.

Some choices he does not regret. To walk these halls again and belong here, to have purpose and a goal and reason to rise every morning—no. He does not regret that.

He wonders, sometimes, what Elthina would have thought of Starkhaven. Wonders what it might have been like, to hear her voice in the Chantry of his boyhood, the arched carved walls throwing the Maker's words even to the farthest pews. Some choices he does not regret. But some—

Corwin knocks politely on the study's open door, enters to place a letter on the writing desk at Sebastian's elbow before withdrawing again. It is not much, only a slim envelope—but Fenris's handwriting he recognizes, and the stamps of a courier paid for haste, and without another thought for Kirkwall he tears it open and begins to read.

A second time. And then a third, and then he looks out the window without seeing. How curious, that a wound which stung so long should have no bite now. He reads the letter again, finds still no pain in the reading: instead there is only an uncertain gladness and something of relief, stunning where anger was expected, and then he sits and draws a sheet of clean pressed paper from the drawer.

 _My dear Fenris_ , he begins, and adds, meaning every word, _and my very dear friend Hawke!_

_—_

Merrill's always liked listening to Varric's stories. He tells them so well, almost like she's home again listening to the hahren, and if she closes her eyes she can almost _see_ everything he says, like he's painting life into being with just the sound of his voice. It's a magic she'll never understand—her own stories always end up all muddled and she gets turned around in circles when she forgets something from the start—but she can appreciate a master craftsman when he hones his art.

Varric's picked one today about a sparrow lost from its flock. It's an awfully sad story, very like one of her favorites from the days when she was a wee little da'len wandering the aravels. Varric's version is a little different than the one she remembers, the Dread Wolf replaced by a pair of wily foxes and the journey down the spirits' river made into a solitary cave, but she doesn't mind much. There's knowledge kept in stories, and even now she's enough of a Keeper to love all she can learn from a tale's truth.

The sparrow flies westward, where Asha'bellenar gives her the shape of a woman. It's Merrill's favorite part of the story and Varric's _marvelous_ at it, his descriptions so vivid that for a moment Merrill's even able to forget the slender wrapped bundle atop Varric's bed, or the anxious buzzing rumors that have suffused Kirkwall for days and given her too much reason to hope.

Even as a woman and walking among other men and women, the sparrow is terribly lonely. She misses her wings; she misses the warmth of a well-built nest in the crooking arm of an oak; she misses the sight of a wild sunrise seen from a thousand feet in the air above a brilliant summer-green mountain's slope.

Merrill closes her eyes and rests her chin in her hands as Varric continues, as he describes her three trials, as he tells of the cold iron that hewed the First Tree and the silver fish that carried the sparrow away from the cliffs at the river's end. Then he tells Merrill about the first day the sparrow sees the arl's son in a yellow wood, and he sees her, and the sparrow understands she will not know flight again.

She'd told Hawke this story, once. They'd been walking in Lowtown by the walls that overlooked the sea, where the air was cleaner, and Hawke had said something that reminded her of the sparrow's love for a man she could not love with a bird's heart. She'd asked and Hawke hadn't known it, so they'd walked the wall for hours while Merrill told her the story; it had been the best she'd ever managed and Hawke had embraced her at the end, thanking her with a voice suspiciously thick. That had been the first time Merrill had called her lethallan.

It is so _hard_ to be Keeper, sometimes, when nobody will listen to the stories of her heart. Not that she's Keeper anymore, not for the People, anyway, but she has so _much_ inside her and no one but Hawke to—

Someone raps at the door.

Merrill and Varric both jump to their feet, though Varric's not got quite so far to go as she, and then the knock comes again and Isabela says—Isabela!— "Oh, just go _in,_ " and then the door bursts open and Isabela's there grinning and smelling like the sea and Fenris is there, too, and behind them both—

"Oh," says Merrill, and then, dazed, "Creators," and somewhere beside her Varric breathes something that sounds suspiciously like a curse and then Hawke, Hawke, _Hawke_ who Merrill thought was dead! Hawke throws herself to her knees and embraces him, laughing, and reaches out to Merrill who tumbles into the mess, laughing herself, crying a little too, perhaps, and dear sweet Toby runs joyful noisy circles around them all.

She can hardly bear her happiness. Hawke tells her own story and it's so unlike the tale of the sparrow and so wonderful at the same time, full of adventure and intrigue and a quest of her own, and it's not quite like Varric's telling but that's all right, too. Merrill laughs again and cries again, and thinks of the slaves gone long before Hawke ever came, and when Hawke tells of the campfire that burned in the night and brought the man Roald to her side Merrill remembers why she came here at all and leaps up in the middle of the battle.

"Here," she says, a bit embarrassed, and presents Hawke with the wrapped bundle from Varric's bed. "I didn't know—only Orana knew where Bodahn and Sandal went and she said he was awfully clever with this sort of thing, and I thought..."

There's an uncomfortable, nervous pause while Hawke unwraps it, and then all at once her face _changes_ into some sober gladness that lights her from the inside out. " _Merrill_ ," she says, lifting her father's mended staff from the brown cloth. "How did you—how—"

"Sandal," she says again, and admires the clever gold filigree winding down the haft, knotting in intricate patterns over the places where it was broken before. Not masked, not hidden away; rather they have been acknowledged and made beautiful instead, scarred and perfect.

"Merrill," Hawke says, and lifts her eyes, "I can't thank you for this."

Fenris nods, silent across the room; Isabela is smiling, and Varric near bursting with pride, and for some reason she can't explain Merrill thinks abruptly of the end of the sparrow's tale, when she has lived a long life with the man she loved and yet yearned every day for the flock she never found, the family lost and not regained no matter how often she searched the empty skies for the echoing beat of their wings. She draws her last breath with her eyes turned to the east, and it is then that the sparrows come, one by one, their bright eyes fixed on their lost sister, and each drops a feather until she is covered head to toe in down. When she is hidden every inch the room fills with the rushing of wings, and it is only at the final moment that the feathers stir and blow away and the small body of the sparrow lies there instead, so still, her heart made whole only by the last sigh of death.

"You're welcome," Merrill says softly, "lethallan."

Hawke is not dead. That is knowledge she can keep gladly, even if the story hurts enough to cut in the darkest places. The sparrow regains her wings; Hawke is not dead; and Merrill—

Merrill has a new family of her own.

—

Orana cries. She knew she would, ever since she opened the first letter from her mistress that thanked her, that said she was alive, that said she was coming _home_. Still, it is so hard to believe until the mistress is here and smiling before her, arms open as they always were, and even before Orana can speak the tears have begun to roll down her face. She cannot quite speak properly—words spill out of her in both Arcanum and the trade tongue, and she can hear Fenris translating in a low voice the things the mistress cannot understand, but—

It had been such a familiar fear. Not for herself, not with the generous terms of the mistress's will providing protection she does not need now, not with all her wages saved up so safely for her own security. Rather, it was the same white worry that blanked her mind when she had been younger, when Hadriana's guards had come silently to the door and taken her father by the arms and went away with him. She had not seen him again.

She is so _glad_ this time is different. She is not fool enough to think it will always be like this—she cannot imagine either Fenris or the mistress able to stay long in the city with still so much unrest, and Orana herself is not made for a life on the run, but all the same—

All the same, with her mistress here and the dog here and the knowledge that nothing has ended without hope of a new start, even after the fall of the Gallows, Orana finally feels free to breathe.

—

While admittedly unfamiliar with the domain of dreaming mages, Donnic is fairly certain that the Fade has just opened a rift right into his living room.

He can think of no other explanation for the ghost standing by his gingham armchair. For one instant of perfect clarity he despairs at the novel of paperwork he's about to incur, and then the spirit says, "Donnic! Hello!" and he trips backwards over the ottoman into a sprawling heap on the floor.

"Oh, _Donnic_ ," Hawke cries, and it—is Hawke, somehow, back from the dead, and even as she reaches to pull him to his feet again he manages to croak out his wife's name. Aveline will know how to deal with ghosts—

And then Aveline is there and Hawke is there and Fenris is clasping arms with him even as he gives the elf a dazed clap on the back, and he doesn't know quite what's— _happening_ , but everyone is laughing and Aveline's cheeks are red as when she stands over the cookfire, and as far as he can tell in his own limited experience with ghosts Hawke is strikingly corporeal and probably even, against all reports, _alive_.

He doesn't know how long they sit there talking. Hours, certainly; the sun sets and the stars rise and a low gibbous moon hangs over the Hightown roofs, and as the night unravels Hawke spins a fantastic tale that he could hardly have believed if it hadn't been her telling it. But she certainly makes it sound true enough, and Fenris beside her on the couch has no expression of disbelief on his face—only a weary sort of exasperation, which Donnic suspects is more to do with the nature of Hawke's exploits than her exaggerations. By the end Donnic has served dinner, removed it again, and his wife has found drinks for them all; Hawke's voice is gone rough with fatigue, the hours slipped near midnight, and no one in the room can keep from yawning, even Fenris.

"Sorry," Hawke says, stifling hers in her palm. "I haven't slept regularly in… I don't know. Ages."

Aveline leans forward, her hands cupped around her mug. "Do you need somewhere to stay?"

"Mm. I don't think so. Orana's said nobody's come to the estate since the first day, and even with the rumors I think we'll manage at either my place or Fenris's while we're here." Hawke throws a sideways glance at Fenris, mouth twisting in amusement. "If the mansion's still off the market, anyway."

Fenris rolls his eyes; Donnic smiles. "It's still there," he tells Fenris. "I'm not sure for how much longer, so you ought to get your things from it while you can."

"Or you might just buy it," Aveline offers without much hope, and Fenris shakes his head.

"It would have little use for me now. It was only a roof, for a time."

Hawke cracks her neck, says tiredly, "And it isn't as though we'll be living here long enough to need two mansions, anyway. Not with the Seekers still roaming the roads."

There's a soft creak of leather as Aveline pushes to her feet, crosses to the low, cheerful blaze in the hearth. They watch her without speaking; she stands there a long time, her brow furrowed pensively, and then Hawke says, "What's wrong, Aveline?" and his wife _flinches_ , or almost does, her head turning too sharply away from them all, and Donnic knows.

"It's nothing," she tries first, her military-squared shoulders not quite enough to make it ring true; Hawke shakes her head and rises, moves to join her, and Aveline's smile slips away. "Nothing I shouldn't have realized months ago. Nothing I ought not to have known all along. I just didn't—"

"Didn't what?"

"Realize. That it was…" she trails off, looks to Donnic, sets her shoulders. "That it would be different now. I should have, of course, but… I suppose I'll miss it. Varric's evenings, Merrill climbing the alienage tree, and you," to Fenris and Donnic, "playing your cards until the small hours of the morning." Her voice is warmer by the end; she gives a bracing smile and looks back to the fire, a few loose strands of her hair flashing red. "As I said. Everything changes, given enough time."

Donnic blows out a breath. Hawke looks thunderstruck, as if Aveline has punched her in the gut; Fenris watches both of them without moving, his face impossible to read, his eyes guarded.

"Oh," Hawke says at last, a long thin sigh, " _Aveline_ ," and then she steps forward until she can embrace the other woman, her head resting on her shoulder. "I'm so sorry. I didn't realize. I thought—"

"I _know_." Aveline shakes her head roughly, returns the embrace hard and quick before letting go. "Hawke. I'll be all right."

"But—"

"She'll write," Fenris says as he pushes to his feet, his eyebrow lifting. "I'll see to it."

Donnic snorts a laugh. "You've never once replied to any of _my_ letters."

Fenris ignores him, though amusement plays at the corners of his mouth. "Regardless, we will not be gone forever."

"That's an easy promise to make," Aveline says without much bitterness, "but good intentions fade easily enough with distance."

"Not so."

"How do you know?"

"Simple," Hawke answers for him, smiling bright enough that Donnic believes her. "This is where our family lives, after all."

—

He's so deep in the Vimmark Mountains that he doesn't even know which city's nearest, but that's the best place for him and his ragged band of apostates to be at the moment, and if seclusion is the cost of safety, well. He's been in worse situations before. And not that he can even call them "ragged" anymore, not really; they're forty strong and growing, cast-offs from Kirkwall and Starkhaven and even a few from the eastern edges of Orlais wandering into their territory day by day by day. Soon enough they'll need to settle, find somewhere to make a stand and make a _home_ , but for now—at least for a little longer, they'll survive as they are. He knew the price of this when he began it.

A sudden commotion rises on the misty edge of camp, and he looks up from the healer's tent long enough to see one of the runners with hands on knees, gasping for air, his long blonde hair hanging in his face. "News," he gasps, "from _Kirkwall_ ," and the whispers spread like a pool of fire until all eyes are on him, all hands stilled in their work. How starved they are for any word—

"They're saying—" he begins, gulping water between breaths, reaching for Bellen's helpful shoulder in support. "The Champion's been seen in Kirkwall. They're saying the man who claimed the bounty faked her death, that she's been in hiding, that now that the templars are easing off she's coming back out into public again. She's alive!"

There's a general cry of approval, support for the woman who set them free by example if not deed, but he—cannot hear it. Can barely see his palms open on his knees, scarred fingers half-curled into themselves. He'd mourned for her. Been furious at her, too, for daring to die when he had still so much to shout at her; grieved for the stifling of a light he always thought too strong to kill; hated her for sending him away, for not understanding what he'd done, had tried to do, hated himself for wanting to _stay_ in spite of all things. Maker's blood, but he's missed her.

He is so _tired._

He is so tired—and yet somewhere in the back of his mind there is a quiet triumph and relief he can hardly put words to. He buries his face in his hands, hiding the weary smile he cannot suppress, exhaling between his fingers until there is nothing left inside him.

Hawke is alive. So is he. And as long as he's got that to spur him onwards—Anders can allow himself to hope.

—

It's been a long time since they've walked the streets like this. Not just since the Gallows; even before then there had been so little chance for anything but endless meetings, of attempt after fruitless attempt to persuade Meredith and Orsino alike to see sense. Pointless, in the end. She could no more grip together the seams of a city determined to fray apart than she could sap blood from a stone. All the same she does not regret the trying—only the time lost with Fenris, and the others, and the solitary walks of the Hightown streets at dusk.

Admittedly, it has slipped to something well past dusk by now. In truth Hawke thinks it must be nearer dawn; she had lost track of time talking with Aveline, and Fenris and Donnic had succumbed to the lure of diamondback, and between one thing and another midnight had come and gone again and taken with it most of the small hours of the morning. Aveline had pressed her to stay, but Hawke had sworn to Orana she would not disappear again without warning, and when Fenris had rejoined her at last, two sovereigns the poorer but a great deal more cheerful, they had set off together into the dark.

How stupid, that such a simple thing should make her so mawkish! But here she walks in this city that she loves and the man that she loves walks beside her, close enough she can feel the warmth of his bare arm against hers, close enough that she can turn anytime she likes and see the strong familiar lines of his profile. Fenris turns and she turns with him, neither of them needing words, and eventually they come to the chest-high wall that lines the back of the closed and shuttered markets, that looks out over the whole of the spill-down city sleeping at their feet.

Fenris rests his forearms on the wall, looking down to the docks just barely visible in the darkness: a thin glittering string of lights like sliding beads, lining the edges of the Waking Sea everywhere it touches the city. Hawke leans on Fenris, pressed against him shoulder to wrist, and closes her eyes. "I think," she says at last, low enough not to break the pre-dawn hush, "that I owe you an apology."

He looks at her, green eyes so familiar and dear, heavy black eyebrows drawn down in confusion. "For what offense?"

"I don't know. I can hardly explain it myself." She slides her arm beneath his own, finds his fingers with her fingers and twines them together. "This last month and a half. The Gallows before then, and Sebastian, and Anders. Even Elthina. And now, even after _everything_ we're halfway to running all over the world again, just in case someone's got a grudge I can't shift. I've dragged you into a rather decided pickle, Fenris, and I'm—sorry for that."

His hand is so warm. He looks down at it where they are joined for a long moment, and then he untangles his fingers and moves hers to lay flat against his, palm to palm, his hand broader and darker and marked with calluses where hers are smooth. Then his other hand comes to cover hers, curling around as if to hide it, and Fenris says, "You shouldn't waste your worry on such things, Hawke."

"Well. Someone's got to."

"My place is at your side."

Hawke looks at him then, startled, but his voice is steady and his eyes unwavering, and when she leans towards him he is already moving to meet her. The kiss does not last long, not nearly enough to satisfy the hurting of her heart, and when they break apart Hawke rests her forehead against his jaw, her eyes shut, content for the first time she can remember in months to be _still_.

"I considered this," Fenris says at last, his voice low and rumbling in her chest. Hawke does not open her eyes. "When you were lost to me. I spent days walking the city's streets and wondering what I ought to do now that my purpose was gone from my hands. Go to Starkhaven. Sail with Isabela, perhaps."

"She would have welcomed you."

"Even so, it was not the life I'd let myself hope for. There were other things I had thought certain that were abruptly… lost."

"Fenris."

"I do not doubt now."

She will _not_ cry. She bites the inside of her cheek hard and moves to kiss him again, her hands lifting to his jaw, his arm coming around her back warm and fierce and strong. Then a second time, and then a third, and then she blinks until the world is real again, until the lightening rose-grey sky behind Fenris's shoulders heralds the arrival at last of dawn. A flock of starlings wheels around the gables of the nearest roof, their wings a rush of beating wind, and then they vanish again behind the rise of white stone wall that marks the end of Hightown; in the distance pale new bells to replace the Chantry's thundering silver ring out the fifth hour of the morning.

Maker, but she _loves_ him.

She tells him so. He does not smile; instead his face grows serious, and his thumb slopes along her cheekbone, and a light as intent and true as she has ever seen in him catches behind his eyes. She does not need the answer. She knows it anyway, can feel the weight of it in every look between them, in every slide of his fingertips over her skin and the sound of her name in his voice. There are no words enough for that.

Fenris steps back from the wall, stretches out his hand towards her. Hightown waits at his back, stirring with sunrise; at hers the rest of Kirkwall wakes, Lowtown and the docks and the shadows even of Darktown growing less heavy with the new day. She hasn't a clue what will come next, where they'll go once Kirkwall chases them from its gates this time, what new troubles will come when least expected to drag them into some new unavoidable intrigue, to raise sword and staff alike in defense of those who have none. She knows only the simplest truth of them all: she will not leave him again.

Fifty-two days since the Gallows fell. Hawke closes her eyes, lets out a long, slow breath. It is time, she thinks, to stop counting.

Fenris is there when she opens them, still waiting, patient and calm and with a gladness in his eyes caught by the yet-young morning light. He lifts an eyebrow; she takes his hand, their fingers linking, lyrium warm against her palm.

He has waited long enough. So has she.

"Come with me," Fenris says, and Hawke does.

—

end.


End file.
